Dale Reynolds writes, "This play dramatizes the events that lead up to the US Supreme Court's 5 to 4 decision to make George W. Bush President of the United States. FLORIDA is based on investigative reporting and eyewitness accounts, including testimony from actual participants in these events. Some of FLORIDA's characters have been created for dramatic purposes, and some are people you will recognize, such as GREG PALAST, KATHERINE HARRIS, and JEB BUSH. Some, such as LEO (CASINO) HARRIS, are portrayed as the real life heroes they were. FLORIDA is a drama based on what happened there, before, during, and after November 7, 2000. FLORIDA, The Election Play, was first read in London (please see Readings on the BACKGROUND page) and these readings have resulted in a devoted cast of actors to carry out projects for FLORIDA. We will be recording, probably in September, 2004, a radio and CD version of the play. "

Bill Berkowitz writes, "According to an August 4 AP story, Harris told the audience that while she was in the Midwest recently, 'the mayor of Carmel told her how a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested and hundreds of kilograms of explosives were found in his home. 'He had plans to blow up the area's entire power grid,' she was reported saying.'... Did Katherine Harris disclose classified information? Or it is a case of her not knowing what she's talking about?... Will the president call Katherine Harris in to the oval office to find out what information she may have disclosed? Will Attorney General Ashcroft unleash the investigatory powers of his office and get to the bottom of the Harris revelations?" When pigs fly...

From the rightwing World Net Daily: "Democrats in the U.S. House are cashing in on the reality-TV craze with the debut of 'Republican Survivor,' an Internet-based cartoon spoof making fun of the biggest names in the GOP. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Rep. Katherine Harris and WorldNetDaily columnist Ann Coulter (sporting a bikini) are all featured on a desert island firing paintball guns in the first episode." Here is the link, enjoy http://www.dtriptv.org/

Greg Palast says, "Listen up: in the last presidential election, one million black folk cast ballots that were dumped in the garbage, never counted. I bet you didn't know that about our 'Clown-ocracy' because you're not supposed to. Find out everything else you're not supposed to know this Wednesday night May 12, 7pm when WPFW presents: Greg Palast - that's me - the author of the New York Times Bestseller, 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.' Katherine Harris says, 'Greg Palast is twisted and maniacal.' Find out why. I'll be joined by my friends - the radio personalities of WPFW, Greg Moore of the NAACP and performance group Spoken Resistance at UDC Van Ness Campus -in the main auditorium - that's building 46. Here's how you get tickets - $15 in advance - all proceeds to Pacifica Radio and the NAACP National Voter Project: Call the membership hotline at 202 588 0999 - extension 344. Or: visit - WPFW's website" (link below).

Greg Palast writes, "Our President says these are dangerous times, filled with guys with exploding shoes and guys marrying other guys. The solution: have computers sniff your DNA and vote for you. I just couldn't resist adding a fat new chapter to The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Penguin released this Expanded Election Edition this week. The audio CD's out too -- read by Janeane, Amy Goodman, Al Franken, Alec Baldwin, Ed Asner, Jim Hightower." Greg presents his book at the following: 5/03 Hartford (WWUH, U of Hartford; 7:30 PM); 5/07 LA (Immanuel Presb. Church; 7 PM); 5/08 LA (Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel; 11 AM); 5/09 San Diego (Meeting Hall, First Unitarian Universalist Church; 7 PM); 5/12 Wash, DC (UDC Van Ness; 7 PM). "Greg Palast is twisted and maniacal." - Katherine Harris. "Greg Palast upsets all the right people." - Noam Chomsky.

Nancy Kuhn writes: "I've been most anxious to view the DVD 'Unprecedented-the 2000 Presidential election,' because I spent 15 years volunteering on numerous election campaigns when I lived in Florida. Because of my own personal experience I know the disputed territory and the election laws that were deliberately broken by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris in 2000 extremely well. I've finally seen 'Unprecedented' and I've found 2 claims made in this documentary that are totally false."

NY Times opines, "One outcome of this year's presidential election is already certain: people will show up to vote and find they have been wrongly taken off the rolls. The lists of eligible voters kept by localities around the country are the gateway to democracy, and they are also a national scandal. In 2000, the American public saw, in Katherine Harris's massive purge of eligible voters in Florida, how easy it is for registered voters to lose their rights by bureaucratic fiat. Missouri's voting-list problems received far less attention, but may have disenfranchised more eligible voters. It's hard to judge where voting lists are being mishandled, since the procedures by which they are kept and corrected are shrouded in secrecy. That's the beginning of the problem. The public has a right to know that the rolls are being properly maintained - and to know it before the election. As became clear in 2000, after the fact is too late."

Greg Palast writes in an intro to an article by Danny Schecter at MediaChannel.org: "The New York Times has uncovered Katherine Harris' wipe out of thousands of voters ... only three years after killing the story exposed by the BBC TV and the Guardian. Here, 'News Dissector' Schechter, formerly of ABC's 20/20, asks how the Times could editorialize on a story they never ran in the first place. And note the Times still can't bring itself to say that the color of illegally purged voters is ... Black." It's taken the Media three years to finally report on the Vote Purge -- and four years to cover the Bush AWOL story. Contrary to the RNC spin that AWOL-gate is just "old news" for voters, most Americans never even heard of it until the last few weeks!

Three years after cheering on Bush's Theft of the Presidency, the NY Times seems to be having a slight change of heart. "The morning after the 2000 election, Americans woke up to a disturbing realization: our electoral system was too flawed to say with certainty who had won. Three years later, things may actually be worse. If this year's presidential election is at all close, there is every reason to believe that there will be another national trauma over who the rightful winner is, this time compounded by troubling new questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." All true - but when will the NY Times apologize for helping Bush steal the White House - and for lying about the results of their own Media Consortium recount?

"U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris on Friday said she will not seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, leaving behind a wide-open race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Graham. The woman who became one of the most polarizing figures in Florida politics for her role as secretary of state during the bitter 2000 presidential race denied she'd been pushed out of the running by a wary White House. And she took full advantage of the national publicity that her talk of a Senate bid garnered to announce she'll seek reelection to her congressional seat -- and perhaps eventually to the Senate... Harris said she decided against a Senate run despite 'every poll showing me leading the race' because she has unfinished business in the House [like she really cares about 'unfinished business']. She denied reports that the president's chief political advisor, Karl Rove, ever flagged her off the race and she laughed off suggestions that she was offered a consolation prize." Yeah...sure...right...

"It was the first time a Florida election using touch screens has been decided by less than 0.25%. When an election is that close, Florida law requires a 'manual recount' of all under-votes and over-votes. But Broward and Palm Beach county elections officials were not sure how to follow the law since most of the voting was done on touch-screen machines, which leave behind no ballots to manually count... While its guidelines are 'not presently definitive,' [the Secretary of State] will probably end up with a rule stating that votes cast on electronic voting machines will not be subject to a manual recount." This is a RED ALERT for everyone concerned about Florida's vote-counting!!! We DEMAND that Florida's legislature pass a law requiring VVPB and manual recounts!

"French irritation over US controls on transatlantic flights was reinforced yesterday when the interior ministry revealed that American intelligence based its suspicions on passengers' surnames only. This led to a child with a name similar to a Tunisian terrorist, a Welsh insurance agent and an elderly Chinese woman restaurant owner being questioned by counter-terrorist police when several flights from Paris to the US were cancelled before Christmas. Three other 'suspects' who were questioned were French citizens with Arab-sounding names. All the suspects' names, supplied by the US, were found merely to be homonyms - similar in sound or spelling to those of wanted al Qaeda... 'Unfortunately the Americans did not supply either birthdate or first name in any of these cases, so we had to hold up all passengers and in some cases carry out lengthy inquiries into family backgrounds in case there was a link.'" It's just like the felon purge in Florida - Katherine Harris must be in charge!

St. Petersburg Times reports, "Less than a year before Floridians vote again for president, the election system remains bedeviled by inconsistencies, red tape and potential obstacles to prospective voters:.. The counties have been told to deal with inconsistencies in the list as best they can. Some are returning to the rolls any voters who the county can't prove are felons. But others are making voters prove they aren't felons in order to vote next year. Despite a legal settlement to make it easier for felons to regain their voting rights, the backlog of former prisoners who have applied to restore their rights has grown to nearly 39,000. That's a six-fold increase since 2001, yet the state earlier this year cut the number of Parole Commission staffers who handle applications. In 2004, could Florida voters again be wrongfully denied their voting rights? 'I don't know that I can answer that,' said Sec. of State Glenda Hood, whom Gov. Jeb Bush appointed to succeed Katherine Harris."

When Katherine Harris was elected to Congress, Jeb Bush appointed Glenda Hood to replace her as Secretary of State. So it comes as no surprise that "Hood said making a paper trail a statewide requirement is not necessary because Florida has multiple safeguards to assure the accuracy and security of touch screens, which are used in Palm Beach County and 14 other counties." Obviously Hood is determined to steal the White House AGAIN for Bush through electronic fraud that will be impossible to detect. We're NOT going to let Glenda HOODWINK Florida and the rest of the Nation! Call 850-245-6500 and demand Voter Verifiable Paper Ballots!

Aviel D. Rubin, "The Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who identified security lapses in the voting system Maryland is adopting took his warnings to Annapolis yesterday, telling legislators he has no confidence the flaws are being fixed... [But] Linda Lamone, director of the [MD] state elections board, largely dismissed Rubin's concerns and insisted Diebold had completed all the recommended changes in its software. She accused computer scientists of trying to undermine confidence in elections officials. 'I think they're doing a great disservice to democracy,' she said. 'They're telling the public: Don't trust them, don't trust the voting equipment.'" You got THAT right, Linda - after Florida, we don't trust the machines, we don't trust their Republican CEO's, we don't trust the Republican Supreme Court, and we don't trust election officials like Katherine Harris and YOU. What part of "voter verifiable receipt" don't you understand???

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a little-known but important federal agency. On December 10-11, 2003, NIST will host a "Symposium on Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems." Naturally, we would start by indicting Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and George W. Bush - but that isn't on their agenda, which focuses on purely "technical" issues. If you live in the DC area and you care about paper audit trails for electronic voting machines, you should attend.

From TalkLeft: "Last April, we wrote about Choice Point, a company hired by the U.S. to collect data on hundreds of millions of citizens of Latin American countries... The Miami Herald has new details: 'Prosecutors in Nicaragua, Mexico and elsewhere across Latin America have opened investigations into the business of private information mining after discovering that the U.S. Justice Dept hired [Choice Point] to collect personal information on up to 300mn people throughout the region without their knowledge... The...project has stirred concerns about the U.S. acting as 'Big Brother' and interfering in the affairs of countries that pose little threat. Officials in Nicaragua worry it could fuel a black market in private information in nations already plagued by corruption and lacking official oversight to prevent abuses... Other clients [involved in this project] are media organizations, including the Chicago Tribune.'" ChoicePoint was the firm used by Katherine Harris to purge voters.

Katherine Harris stole the election - and now she's a Member of Congress. How did THAT happen? Watch Grand Theft America from BushFlash.com.

From Steve in Sarasota: "I was personally told to leave the hall by two Bradenton police officers when I asked them how they could prevent people from bringing literature into the hall. They just said, 'Those are the rules.' so I asked, 'What rules?', 'Whose rules?', and 'What law is that?'. They just kept repeating, 'Those are the rules.' So I challenged them by saying, 'You can't prevent people from possessing political literature. It's in the Constitution.' At that point the two officers told me that I had to leave the building. I asked for one of their badge numbers and one of them gave me his card...."

The Bradenton Herald reports: "The crowd's mood already was testy before the meeting began. Security guards and Harris' staff confiscated any written material people tried to bring into the hall. The confiscated literature included analysis of the Medicare prescription bills passed in the House and Senate in June as well as a chart showing Harris' voting record since she began her term in January. The fliers were distributed during an earlier news conference staged in the parking lot by senior citizens to protest House and Senate bills designed to provide prescription drug coverage through Medicare. The protesters were asking Harris to support reform and not support either bill, which they said provided too little coverage to too few through a plan that would ultimately privatize and weaken Medicare."

Greg Palast writes, "In July 2002, Choicepoint's DBT signed off with People for the American Way... and confessed to the whole mess. They provided the court with list of 94,000 names, far more than I expected, who were targeted for the purge. Until then, I had estimated that the list had at best one in ten verifiable names. I was too kind. The DBT records show that one in thirty names on its list positively matched name, age, social security number race and other identifiers with the 'felons' they were purported to be. In other words, over 90,000 citizens, half of them non-white, were wrongly named. Harris... agreed to return the voters to the voter rolls. Sadly, they explained, they could not return the voters their rights until after Governor Bush's reelection. [Note: Last month, in July 2003, I returned to Florida [and met] Willie Steen, a veteran and hospital worker whom Florida agrees was wrongly tagged a felon. Steen to this day remains barred from registering to vote.]"

Greg Palast writes, "In the months leading up to the November 2000 balloting, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, in coordination with Governor Jeb Bush, ordered local elections supervisors to purge these 57,700 from voter registries. In Harris's computers, they are named as felons who have no right to vote in Florida. Thomas Cooper is on the list... convicted of a felony on January 30, 2007. 2007? You may suspect something's wrong with the list. You'd be right. At least 90.2% of those on this 'scrub' list, targeted to lose their civil rights, are innocent. Notably, over half -about 54%- are Black and Hispanic voters. Overwhelmingly, it is a list of Democrats. Harris declared George W. Bush winner of Florida, and thereby president, by a plurality of 537 votes over Al Gore. Now do the arithmetic. Over 50,000 voters wrongly targeted by the purge, mostly Blacks. My BBC researchers reported that Gore lost at least 22,000 votes as a result of this smart little blackbox operation."

"A new display at the South Florida Science Museum helps explain Palm Beach's infamous role in the presidential election three years ago by letting children and adults try out the now-retired punchcard ballot on an authentic Votomatic III... 'Many people just walk by it and shake their heads and you can see the flood of memories come back,' said Jim Rollings, the museum's executive director. 'But the out-of-towners come up and they really want to look it over to see if the ballot is as confusing as it was made out to be.' Just for those who easily forget, a sign next to the four-legged stand where sample paper ballots can be inserted explains: 'Many voters claimed that they were confused by the instructions, by the design and by the physical motion needed to punch through the voting cards.'" How about getting Madame Tussaud to make a wax statue of Katherine Harris?

"About 22,000 of the 55,000 airport screeners hired by the government haven't undergone criminal background checks, the chairman of the House Transportation aviation subcommittee said Friday. Rep. John Mica... said he has told the Transportation Security Administration it must speed up the process to ensure qualified people are doing the work. 'It is a concern because one of the reasons we federalized this in the first place was because there hadn't been background checks, or standards for background checks, before September 11'... Normally, screeners are not deployed at airports until they have had criminal history checks by the FBI and by a Justice Department contractor, ChoicePoint Inc., said TSA spokesman Brian Turmail. ChoicePoint also investigates applicants' employment history and interviews their acquaintances by phone, Turmail said." ChoicePoint was the firm used by Jeb and Katherine Harris to purge likely Gore voters from the Florida rolls, by misidentifying them as felons.

AP reports: "Police raided the offices of two Nicaraguan businesses accused of selling government files to a U.S. data-gathering company, and discovered one of them had a database containing federal voting records, authorities said Friday. Also Friday, the U.S. data vendor, ChoicePoint Inc. said it was preparing a response to an inquiry from Mexico's federal elections agency. The e-mailed request asked ChoicePoint to identify Mexican companies hired to purchase a database of Mexicans' personal details." ChoicePoint was the firm hired by Jeb and Katherine Harris to purge the voter rolls of likely Gore voters in Florida -- by misidentifying minorities as felons.

Bush needs 9 votes for a majority in the UN Security Council, and he only has 4, counting Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria. The swing votes are Angola, Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile and Pakistan. The six countries "are really feeling the heat, and they're going to be feeling even more heat in coming days," said election-stealer-in-chief Karl Rove. But Bush doesn't have a prayer, since Angola, Guinea, and Cameroon endorsed the French position yesterday, and Mexico's Fox brushed off Spain's Aznar today. Bush has only one option - call in Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) to count the UN votes!

We're gonna hurl! 2000 notoriety (i.e. Election Theft) gives Cruella Harris a high profile in Congress. Harris won a lottery and got the first pick of offices among 53 new House members. "All my colleagues were demanding a recount," Cruella said... "There's just so much, and so many rules," she said. "It's been a little daunting"... Pass the Pepto Bismal, please! Plus we're wondering if Rep. Wexler (D) has been replaced by a Stepford Democrat "I hope she uses her notoriety to benefit Florida. I'll be rooting for her."

Marc Ash writes, "One lie in the great nest of lies that has become America since December 13, 2000 is that Al Gore 'ran a poor race.' The truth is that no Democrat who ever ran for anything, anywhere at anytime ever got more votes than Gore got in his bid to become our 43rd President. In fact only Republican Ronald Reagan in 1984 got more votes... Gore faced down a ruthless frontal assault by right wing extremists determined to destroy him at any cost. He withstood a litany of deliberately bad press, bought and paid for by corporate financiers looking for control of the federal government. He survived a treacherous backside assault by Ralph Nader. He even succeeded in preventing Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris from stealing the election in the state of Florida; in the end, Bush and his corporate backers had to enlist the aid of their right-wing allies in the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only did Al Gore not 'run a poor race,' he ran one of the greatest races this country has ever seen."

BUZZFLASH: Doesn't electronic, touch screen voting actually improve the chances for large scale election fraud? Votes can more easily be lost with a little 'software glitch' or Democratic votes could become Republican votes and who would know the difference? PALAST: Hell, yes. The 'touch' screens are made by ES&S, chosen by Katherine Harris, congressional candidate. The lobbyist for that company is Sandy Mortham, founder of Women for Jeb - and Harris' predecessor as Secretary of State. It was Mortham that began the hunt for black voters in 1998. These Mortha-matic machines - surprise, surprise -failed to work in Black precincts. And there was no paper ballot back-up. It's not planned 'conspiracy' - it's what I call 'passive vote fraud.' You KNOW a screw up will occur that will wipe out your opponents votes ... and you simply don't do anything to prevent it... Passive fraud is no more legal than active fraud. But then, who's going to act on this? John Ashcroft?

Campaign for America's Future writes, "In the mire of this week's election, a few remarkable stars were elected to Congress. Here are three new progressives whose energy, ideas and leadership will help transform this country in the years to come." Meet Chris Van Hollen (MD-8), who defeated veteran incumbent Connie Morella just outside Washington DC and thus became a national star... Raul Grijalva (AZ-7), who built a powerful grassroots movement in southwest Arizona... and Kendrick Meek (FL-17), whose sit-in at Jeb Bush's office in 2000 galvanized the black community to turn out a huge vote to elect Al Gore - forcing Jeb and Katherine Harris to steal the election.

"A Learjet belonging to the true owner of the Venice flight school that trained both terrorist pilots who flew into the World Trade Center was seized with more than 30 pounds of heroin onboard by Federal Agents in July of 2000 at the Orlando Executive Airport. Authorities at the time called it the biggest seizure of heroin ever found in central Florida. The seized plane belonged to [the secret owner of Huffman Aviation, Wallace Hilliard. At the same time these planes were flying heroin, Hilliard's charter service was also being used at virtually no cost by Jeb Bush. Even stranger, both Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris were providing celebrity endorsements to Hilliard's operation well after the company's Lear jet] had been busted by DEA agents armed with machine guns... One would think a sitting Governor seems well-advised to steer well clear of anything to do with heroin trafficking. Yet Governor Jeb Bush honored Hilliard's operation... with a personal visit, even posing for photos."

John Kaminski writes, "What really determines elections is who counts the votes, and who counts the votes is somebody you probably didn't know, and if you did know them, you surely wouldn't trust them to count the votes. No government agency counts the votes. And the people who count the votes, who tell you who your next president is, have no government oversight, no audit, no official you have elected watching over them. The people who really count the votes are the media, more specifically a politically influenced cabal of minions bought and paid for by corporate tycoons who own the nation's major media outlets. These are the same people who don't think peace demonstrations are worthy of coverage, and who in the year 2000 got together and reviewed the data from Florida and then really wouldn't tell us what they found out. They'd only say ... 'Bush won,' just like the Supreme Court."

Greg Palast writes, "In Dec. 2000, we reported that Florida's use of a faulty and politically questionable list of felons and dead people 'scrubbed' from voter rolls - half of them African-Americans - may have cost Al Gore the 537-vote margin of victory claimed by George W. Bush in Florida. [Now] Jeb is fighting to fend off a challenge from Bill McBride for the governor's race. The Nov. 5 face-off could again come down to thousands, if not hundreds, of votes... DBT Online... reports that if it followed strict criteria to eliminate those errors, [only] 3,000 names would remain - and a whopping 91,000 people would have their voting rights restored. Eventually the list will be fixed, state officials have promised, in accordance with a settlement with the NAACP in its civil rights suit against Florida following the 2000 election. But not until the beginning of next year - and after Jeb Bush's reelection bid is long over." Call talk shows and denounce Jeb's plans to steal ANOTHER election!

In the face of the controversial decision by the PBS network to refuse to transmit the investigative report, the nation's top PBS stations will independently broadcast COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY. Directed by Emmy-award winner Danny Schechter, the 57-minute documentary follows BBC television reporter Greg Palast as he discovers how Katherine Harris removed up to 57,000 legal voters from registries - mostly black - five months before the 2000 election. While the public broadcast network chiefs refused to schedule this important report, dozens of local stations are insisting on showing the expose before the mid-term elections. 10-24 9 PM KNME ALBUQUERQUE- SANTA FE, NM; 10-24 10 PM WPTD DAYTON, OH; 10-24 10 PM WPTO CINCINNATI, OH; 10-27 12 PM WGCU FORT MYERS- NAPLES, FL; 10-30 9 PM KBDI DENVER, CO; 10-31 10 PM KLCS LOS ANGELES, CA; 11-4 Midnight WNET NEW YORK, NY; 11-5 10 PM KCET LOS ANGELES, CA; 11-6 8 AM WHUT WASHINGTON, DC.

Victor Hill writes: "Jan Schneider couldn't picture herself in former Yale Law School classmate Hillary Rodham Clinton's shoes during the 1996 presidential campaign. She saw Clinton's frenetic schedule. The crowds, the speeches, the balloons. The focus on makeup, hair and style. The hoopla. "You're crazy," Schneider told Clinton, who attended Yale with Schneider in the early 1970s. "Nothing could ever make me a candidate in this insane election system." Yet today, Schneider, shy, plain and awkward before cameras and big crowds, is center stage in one of the highest-profile congressional races in the country. An underfunded, little-known, novice Democratic candidate, she's taking on rich, famous, Republican veteran Katherine Harris in a solidly GOP district. Schneider said outrage over Harris' role in the 2000 presidential election forced her to run. She couldn't stomach the idea of Harris waltzing into Congress as a reward for helping put Bush in the White House." Neither can we!

Sen. Lautenberg, we are very excited that you are now on the Democrats Senate ticket and we know you will have many more years as one of the nation's best Senators. When the GHP takes you to the Supreme Court (because you know they will do anything to have a dictatorship at any level) here is a great strategy for you to use. Just have Mr. Torricelli tell them that he withdrew his candidacy 3 weeks ago and you are backdating to the proper date, just as Katherine Harris did in Florida when she broke the law by not resigning in time, and should not have been permitted to run in this election. Why aren't GHP lawyers challenging HER?

Louisiana politics are starting to sound a lot like Florida's. While Katherine Harris did everything she could to manipulate the election outcome, at least she wasn't running for office at the same time. But in Louisiana, election official Suzanne Haik Terrell (R) is not only running for office, but also calling the shots on elections and scooping up a cool half-million dollars for TV ads from the NRSC. Republican Governor Mike Foster (R) was even considering throwing his hat into the shark ring himself, as a way to try to skew the election even further because in LA, if you can reduce the percentage of votes going to each candidate so no one gets 50%, you can force a runoff. So, Foster would have been a 1) Senate candidate, 2) governor, and 3) top election official in the state of LA (see http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/newsstory/vote02.html). Why is it the GOP has to resort to tricks and deceptions, court cases, and election machinery manipulation to win?

During a round-table discussion for Katherine Harris - the Sultana of the Shallowly Superficial - Dick Armey said "I always see two Jewish communities in America. 'One of deep intellect and one of shallow, superficial intellect." He said conservatives have a deeper intellect and "occupations of the brain" like engineering, science and economics, while liberals work in "occupations of the heart," such (he said) as the arts. Armey, who has strong pro-Israel political views, defended his comments Tuesday in a Washington news conference, saying they apply to all liberals. "Liberals are in my estimation just not bright people. They don't think deeply; they don't comprehend; they don't understand... They have a narrow educational base, as opposed to the hard scientists." Wonder how Dick explains liberal Jew Albert Einstein and all those liberal with Nobel Prizes? We're outraged at this insult to liberal Jews! Contact the Republican Party (202.863.8500 info@rnc.org) and demand an apology!

According to White House Spokespuppet Ari Fleischer, the malfunctioning machinery and other problems in the Florida primary were entirely the fault of Democratic elections supervisors. He conveniently overlooked the serious problems in Republican strongholds like Duval County. He declined to acknowledge the role of Katherine Harris in selecting the new voting machines, and her dereliction of her duty to ensure proper training for elections workers. He also neglected to mention that George Bush prevented money allocated by Congress for election reform from being disbursed, and that the Republicans in Congress have been holding up major election-reform legislation. What happened to that "responsibility era" George promised? Or did he mean he'd give us an "always somebody else's responsibility" era?

"It was a Democrat, President Harry S. Truman, that had a sign on his desk that proclaimed, "The Buck Stops Here". Those simple four words define the ultimate responsibility for an executive in charge of a state, or the nation. Having observed Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris concerning two botched elections in the state, it's clear their motto is, 'Never miss an opportunity to Pass the Buck.' Let there be NO doubt that the supervisors of election in the 13 counties (No, not just Broward and Miami-Dade as the GOP are trying to spin it) that had issues in Florida deserve scrutiny and blame. But, the ultimate responsibility lies with Katherine Harris, who oversaw the changes after the 2000 Presidential election fiasco and was, until six weeks ago, Florida's Secretary of State, and, her boss, Governor Jeb. Harris' job was to ensure that a proper election was conducted in the state" writes Steven Lesar.

Turning back the clock, we saw a state that had a disastrous and corrupt election. Today we saw the same things. Florida did not open some polling places for 5 hours after the state law mandates it. Thousands of voters were turned away again. Jeb Bush has got to take responsibility for this. The second question is what was Katherine Harris doing for most of this year? Obviously she wasn't doing her job, and instead, she ran her own campaign while she should have been serving the people of Florida. She also failed to follow the law and she did not resign her position soon enough to run in the district she is now running in. Once again these people have no shame. The good people of Florida should immediately demand Jeb's resignation, and Harris should be disqualified for her clear incompetence and voter disenfrachisement. Do you really think it is a cooincidence that the main problem areas were Miami/Dade and Broward again? They must be practicing to steal the 2004 election for W.

On 9-3-02, Democrats.com challenged an AP story which said the media recounts showed Bush winning Florida. Thanks to YOUR complaints, the AP published a rare correction: "The story should also have noted that some scenarios showed Gore coming out ahead." But then the AP undercut its correction with this nonsense: "Gore would have finished ahead by the barest of margins had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount." As everyone but the AP knows, the Florida Supreme Court ORDERED a statewide count of uncounted votes on 12-9-00 (as required by Florida election law), and workers assembled at county offices around the state and began counting - until the Felonious Five on the US Supreme Court ordered a halt to the count because they knew Al Gore would beat their fellow Republican - which the media recount proved. Once again, E-mail feedback@ap.org and tell the AP to stop its Orwellian rewrite of history!

"Four times the [Sarasota] Herald-Tribune has recommended Katherine Harris in an election for public office. The recommendations were made with reservations, sometimes with trepidation, but always in the hope that experience would help Harris harness her extraordinary energy, bring clarity to her views and teach her to avoid those embarrassing blunders. That hope has vanished. Mistakes and misjudgments, which continued right through Harris' confounding resignation as secretary of state, can no longer be dismissed as the products of inexperience. Mishaps aren't the exception but the expectation. Likewise, the startling lack of clarity when Harris discusses public policies and her political vision -- without the aid of scripts or handlers -- can no longer be excused as a byproduct of a novice's uncontained enthusiasm. Desultory responses to questions are the standard, regardless of the stage of her career or the importance of the office sought."

In an article about Katherine Harris' new book, The Associated Press lied about the manual recount by the Media Consortium - which included the AP. The AP now says, "Some unofficial ballot inspections paid for by consortiums of news agencies showed Bush winning by varying margins." But here's what the AP itself wrote on 11-11-01: "A full, statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes could have erased Bush's 537-vote victory and put Gore ahead by a tiny margin ranging from 42 to 171 votes, depending on how valid votes are defined." E-mail feedback@ap.org and tell the AP to stop its Orwellian rewrite of history!

"Lawyers representing Florida's black voters in a federal voting rights lawsuit arising from the bitterly contested 2000 president election may be close to settling the case with the Florida secretary of state, two other state agencies and the election supervisors of Orange and Hillsborough counties... The plaintiffs seek a range of remedies to ensure registered black voters are not prevented from voting in the future," but did not seek punishment for the crimes committed by Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush et al in 2000. "The lawsuit claims that there were a disproportionate number of ballots in black precincts without votes counted for the presidential election. It also claims that black voters were wrongfully purged from the official lists of eligible voters, voter registration applications of black voters were not processed properly, and registered black voters encountered unjustified barriers to voting at their precincts."

In Broward County FL, "Election officials have re-edited a video used to train poll workers and have apologized to Republicans after complaints the tape portrays a GOP voter as intolerant and abusive. The tape, which is designed to instruct how to handle potential conflict during elections, shows a white voter who identifies himself as voting Republican verbally abusing a black poll worker. 'This is just outrageous. It is incomprehensible that our highest election official would take a partisan shot at a member of the Republican Party,' said George LeMieux, the Broward Republican chairman. LeMieux had demanded the offending portion of the tape be erased and that Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant apologize to the county's Republicans." Hey LeMieux - are you afraid of the "conservatively incorrect" TRUTH about GOP racism? And when will Katherine Harris - and George Bush - apologize to America for stealing the White House?

"Florida's 'resign to run' law requires that elected officials seeking another office submit a letter on the day of qualifying for the upcoming race stating when they intend to resign... [Katherine] Harris, whose office enforces state elections law, said she did not realize that the law applied to her because" - well, she's a REPUBLICAN, just like George Bush and Dick Cheney! "So today, Ms. Harris, the official who made so much of 'following the letter of the law' during Florida's botched 2000 presidential election, resigned as secretary of state in a letter to Gov. Jeb Bush dated Aug. 1, but she said her resignation was effective July 15" - ONCE AGAIN illegally reinterpreting Florida law to benefit HERSELF! Of course, Harris insists her crimes are perfectly legal, and she should not be jailed or thrown off the ballot. But when Palm Beach missed a deadline set by Harris, she THREW OUT THEIR VOTES! Katherine Harris is a career criminal - lock her up and throw away the key!!!

Bow Wow! "7/3/02: Today starts out with a surprise! Captain Wayne Gunther, Campaign Manager for Percy (the dog) for Congress! The dog that is running against Katherine Harris! Learn how well he is doing too! He likes to relieve himself on a 'bush'. Make no mistake, Wayne is a true patriot making a loud statement about our political 'system' with Percy. Letters are pouring in from the whole world supporting his stance. Check it out at http://www.percyforcongress.com/!" Also, call in Meria's show today (602-404-7556) for the telethon to help keep her daring show going! There is also a donate button at the bottom of www.meria.net.

SARASOTA -- The newest candidate challenging Secretary of State Katherine Harris in her bid for Congress is truly an underdog: a border collie mix. Percy the dog is running as a write-in candidate in the Republican primary, said his owner and campaign manager, Wayne Genthner. Just remember to vote for the dog WITHOUT the makeup.

"The Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune [a subsidiary of the NY Times] recently ran a 4,400-word, 2 1/2-page spread on Republican congressional candidate Katherine Harris. And when one reader complained that Democratic candidates were getting short shrift, Managing Editor Rosemary Armao responded with a remarkably candid e-mail - one that wound up costing her her job. 'Katherine Harris is an international figure, like her or not...She's going to be the next congresswoman from this area, like it or not...I have no intentions of covering each of the Democratic candidates to the same extent.'" When Armao's boss told Armao she would be fired, Armao quit. Like Katherine Harris, Armao couldn't care less about counting the votes. Armao says she is "worried whether I'll ever have another job in journalism." With a "what's the use" attitude like that, we're even more worried that she might get a job as an election supervisor!

The lawsuit filed by the NAACP and other civil rights organizations against Florida for the widespread disenfranchisement of minority voters goes to trial August 26 - right before Florida's fall primaries. It'll be fun to once again watch Katherine Harris squirm on the stand, as she did in front of the Civil Rights Commission, practicing her Marie Antoinette-style form of plausible deniability. The only thing missing will be watching Jeb, the architect of the election theft, do the same. Winning the award for most delusional liar in a supporting role, a spokesperson for Katherine Harris is quoted in the Miami Herald as saying, "We remain confident that Florida's national leadership in election reform will be vindicated in the ultimate outcome." We hope Jeb and Katherine's brand of "election reform" - a thoroughly appalling way to define denying people their right to vote - gets VILIFIED, not vindicated, as it deserves to be!

Here is a battle that belongs on HBO - investigative journalist Greg Palast versus Election 2000 thief-in-chief Katherine Harris. Palast described Harris' crimes in detail in the March issue of Harper's Magazine. Harris replied with a nasty ad hominen letter, totally in keeping with her Cruella DeVille character. Of course, Palast rips her letter to shreds. In a REAL Democracy, Harris would be held accountable for stealing an election - and then lying about it. But under Bush, we no longer live in a Democracy.

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!

"Led off by state Sen. Kendrick Meek, speakers at a daylong session in downtown Miami complained the state had not provided enough funds or time to educate voters about the new equipment or address accessibility issues for disabled voters and those not proficient in English language. They predicted that new polling procedures and redistricting changes will create major problems in the upcoming Sept. 10 primary, when 41 of Florida's 67 counties will be required to use new voting equipment... In her opening statement, [Civil Rights Commission Chair Mary Frances] Berry said the commission had invited Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris... to give a first-hand update on the reforms. But none of them appeared. 'The commission is especially disappointed that Bush declined to join us, and did not send a representative because of his earlier statements that he would cooperate with this commission and would do so without a subpoena compelling him to do so,' Berry said. "

Law.com reports, "A state judge in Fort Lauderdale has short-circuited the contentious lawsuit over the Florida Legislature's congressional redistricting plan brought in Broward Circuit Court... 'This woman is crazy,' Judge Robert Lance Andrews said Tuesday of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and her motion, which among other things claimed Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth had been 'the butt of humor' before the three-judge panel overseeing the federal case because they couldn't figure out what side of the case he was on. Harris, a Republican, became nationally known in 2000 for her role in the presidential recount battle. Butterworth is a Democrat. In his order dismissing Harris' attempt to disqualify Butterworth, Andrews wrote: 'It is irrefutable that the authority to speak or defend the state of Florida is vested only with the attorney general.'"

Writes Nancy Kuhn: "The purpose of this letter is to bring to the attention of this commission an outline of the very extensive and strong evidence that Democrats.com is compiling in our extensive investigation of the 2000 Presidential election in Florida and to relate this evidence to the issues outlined in the commission's press release that announced this 6/20/02 hearing in Miami."

Public Citizen, which tracks the flow of "527" soft money flooding into congressional campaigns, has found serious problems with the way the IRS is administering the disclosure system and specifically pointed to Katherine Harris' mysteriously blank records. "It's not clear if [soft money groups with missing records] failed to file or whether the IRS lost their reports; the IRS can't say with certainty. In other cases, reports on the IRS Web site appear and then mysteriously disappear without explanation. For instance, as of May 31, 2002, the most recent disclosure report for "American Values in Democracy Project, Inc.," [what a sense of irony these people must have] a group chaired by Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state, showed nothing but four entirely blank pages." Is Bush's IRS scrubbing reports that would expose Katherine Harris' corruption?

"Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, now a candidate for Congress, is writing a book about her controversial role in the 2000 presidential election." Read the preliminary edits. "Dear Katherine, The first draft is terrific! All of us here at Delusional Press are thrilled to be working with such an exciting new talent. We do have a few minor editing suggestions, however, that might better serve to underscore your diligence and objectivity during this turbulent episode in American politics. To begin with, we're not entirely comfortable with any of your proposed titles, which I will discuss in order of stated preference. 'Tell Al Gore To Kiss My Smokin' Hot Chad' is too wordy to fit on the book's cover. Also, the tone is a bit brash for our conservative readership. While your second choice, 'Recount, Shmecount!' has a nice wry ring to it, the title struck some of us as flippant, considering the heavy historic event about which you're writing."

"Greg Palast: I just got a letter from Katherine Harris - Cruella herself. Maybe she read my book right?.... I want to make sure we have all her titles correct. She's not just the Secretary of State. Let's not forget that she was campaign chairwoman for the Bush for President Campaign. She's never complained that there might be a bit of bias in how she handled the purging of the Florida voter registration rolls which she was in charge of. Katherine Harris wrote that 'Mr. Palast erroneously claims that my predecessor and I removed lawful voters from the Florida registration rolls when in fact, the legislature mandated that we remove these people.' Well, yes, but Katherine Harris wrote the law, and she implemented it. The law says remove ex-felons. It doesn't say to remove a bunch of innocent black people. Excuse me -- read the law again. It says ex-felons, not people who are innocent, but may vote for Al Gore."

Tom Edsall writes, "Key Democratic senators contended yesterday that the Justice Department did not address the most politically sensitive issues in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, particularly allegations of illegal purges of voter lists and the denial of voting rights to minorities... The Democrats' complaints were prompted by a [letter to Pat Leahy from Ralph Boyd, the assistant AG] for civil rights. Boyd wrote that there were 'very few voters who actually were prevented from voting' in Florida. [The Justice Department charges do not involve Katherine Harris, whom many civil rights leaders and Democrats accused of encouraging voting-rights denials, by hiring a firm that produced a controversial list of voters to be purged]. 'This investigation seems to be more about wallpapering over the troubling records of [Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris] than it is about seriously addressing what happened in Florida,' said Jenny Backus, [Gore's spokeswoman] during the Florida recount."

"Katherine Harris has a lot on her plate… She's finishing her term as Florida secretary of state, she's running for Congress and, CNN has learned, she's busy working on a book about the 2000 presidential election recount, which made her an international celebrity. Her book is titled, "Center of the Storm: Practicing Principled Leadership in a Time of Crisis." Sources say it will feature previously unknown anecdotes from the recount and will focus on the leadership principles Harris drew upon during the process." No shame, no remorse for blocking hand recounts, or for failing pitifully to fulfill her job description as Secretary of State. "It's a scandal that anyone would think she's qualified to be in Congress," said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and outspoken Harris critic throughout the recount debacle. "If the citizens of Sarasota are foolish enough to vote for a woman whose main qualifications are treachery and crookedness, then they'll deserve what they get."

Greg Palast's continuing reports on the Florida felon purge "are devastating: disclosing e-mails and internal Florida state documents indicating that Harris' office KNEW the purge swept away the civil rights of innocents - and changed the outcome of the election. Counsel for the US Civil Rights Commission has said that Palast's reports provided, "The first hard evidence of systematic violation of civil rights.... Palast says, 'The US Justice Department's suit is a sham - the beneficiaries of the voting disaster, Bush's agencies, have figured out a way to do the least possible political damage to candidates Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush. They have aimed their fire at blameless county officials when the disaster was created in Tallahassee - a disaster for Black voters, though a blessing to the highly partisan Secretary of State's office. I fear this is an attempt to undercut the suit by the NAACP against Harris and others more directly responsible.'"

Marie Cocco writes, "The Justice Department says it plans to file suit against three Florida counties for voting-rights violations [in the 2000 election debacle]. None involves the mayhem created by machines that couldn't read votes properly...None involves the infamous statewide purge of alleged felons from the rolls - a purge so flawed [that even county officials were purged as felons]. None of this figures in the Justice Department's Florida effort, though...Last year, when the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found widespread disenfranchisement of African-Americans and other minorities in the Florida vote, the report was dismissed as partisan hogwash by the [Republicans on the panel]. Meanwhile, a broad voting-rights lawsuit brought by the NAACP [that charges Katherine Harris with disenfranchising] thousands of African-Americans in Florida moves forward...Justice is slowly being served, despite the Department of Justice."

Tom Edsall of the Washington Post writes, "The Justice Department's intervention in three Florida counties, which it accuses of violating voters' rights in the 2000 presidential election, deals mainly with would-be voters who needed 'language assistance,' according to letters released by the counties. Some civil rights groups complained yesterday that the inquiry should tackle a more controversial issue: Florida's purge of voter registration lists, which allegedly denied many minority voters access to the ballot box in November 2000... Anita Hodgkiss, director of the voting rights project for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights [said] the inquiry also should address the 'statewide purging of voters,' -- an issue that might draw Gov. Jeb Bush [R-crook] and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris into the voting rights litigation."

St. Pete Times reports, "After an 18-month investigation, nearly 11,000 complaints, discussions with AG Bob Butterworth's office and even a review of the NAACP's complaint logs, the federal government has determined that only certain minority voters were wronged. They were Hispanics in Orange and Osceola counties and Haitians in Miami-Dade. Not a single word from Justice about Katherine Harris' flawed purged voter list [or] the high number of discarded 'overvotes' in areas with high concentrations of black voters, such as Jacksonville... 'It doesn't pass the smell test,' says state Democratic chairman Bob Poe. 'What is their political agenda? To make inroads and score points with non-Cuban Hispanics and Haitians.' Poe said he would contact members of the Senate Judiciary Committee... and urge them to probe deeper into the Justice Department's legal strategy in FL. [And] the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced it would come back to Florida June 20 for a daylong hearing in Miami."

The Republicans - led by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and Clay Roberts - stole the Florida election by disenfranchising thousands of African-American voters. Their primary tool was the intentionally fraudulent "felon" purge, in which African-Americans were disproportionately included. It was a "high-tech lynching," to quote Supreme Injustice Clarence Thomas (from the Anita Hill hearings), a 21st-century version of Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Florida's black voters for a century after Reconstruction. The Justice Dept. recently announced legal action against 3 Florida counties, but 2 of those - Miami-Dade and Osceola - focus on language problems facing immigrants. If there is NO JUSTICE over the felon purge - including CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS - there will be NO PEACE - at least from Democrats.com!

On the "morning after" the Justice Dept announced vague plans to maybe someday sue 3 Florida counties for election 2000 voter disenfranchisement, Democrats woke up feeling used. According to Salon, "Florida Democratic Party spokesman Ryan Banfill warned that the lawsuits may be little more than 'window dressing to provide some political cover for the president and his brother,' Jeb, who is running for reelection as Florida governor this year... 'I saw yesterday they mentioned voter purges. Well, that means they should be looking at [Secretary of State] Katherine Harris. But the fact that her office is not part of this suit makes us think this may not go as far as it should. If they're talking about voter purges, they should be talking about a lot more than three counties,' Banfill said." EXACTLY - and they should be talking about CRIMINAL PROSECUTION of Jeb, Katherine, and Clay Roberts.

The fact that Katherine "Cruella de" Harris would have the audacity to run for public office with her history of stealing elections for others boggles the mind. This is arrogance and lack of conscience on a staggering scale - she's flipping the bird to the American public and figuring they'll still eat up every bit of hogwash she dumps before them! But, alas, Harris has powerful rich friends who can, as Bush's powerful rich friends have proven, buy undeserved offices. But Democrats have the spunk, guts, and spirit and it's time to rally the troops! A good place to start is for Florida voters to get behind Candice Brown McElyea, who is challenging Cruella - but not getting near enough attention. Hey, Candice - Harris may have all the corporate cash on her side, but you're the "good guy" and we're behind ya all the way!

Katherine Harris, a candidate for the 13th Congressional District from Florida, paid for a 30-second television ad in Sarasota and Manatee counties. "It makes an oblique reference to her role in the November 2000 election controversy, using a quotation from an ABCNEWS broadcast about a 'standing ovation … from members of both parties,' accompanied by a narrator who says, 'she was honored for her work, respected by Democrats and Republicans alike.' But the 'respected by Democrats' line drew a sharp response from members of that party. 'The only way that Katherine Harris can get votes from Democrats is if she's counting the votes herself,' said Kim Rubey, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 'She has a host of vulnerabilities and she's stretching the truth as much as she stretched the limits of Florida laws. So it's no wonder she's running ads so early,' Rubey said." So reports ABC News.

NPR's Juan Williams visited Jacksonville, FL, in the heart of Duval County, where 27,000 votes went uncounted on Election Day 2000. Of those, 16,000 (60%) were cast by blacks, who voted over 90% for Gore - more than enough to change the outcome of the election. But the Republican Supervisor of Elections, John Stafford, refused to tell black leaders about all the uncounted ballots until it was TOO LATE to file a challenge. Was there a conspiracy to spoil ballots cast by black voters? No one is seriously making that allegation. But was there a conspiracy to keep black leaders from finding out about the 27,000 uncounted ballots? Absolutely! John Stafford, like Katherine Harris, belongs in jail.

Margie Burns writes in Buzzflash, "Here is what the Florida Secretary of State should have said, on November 10, 2000: 'As you also know by now, citizen reports and affidavits indicate that tens of thousands of ballots have been discarded as overvotes and undervotes, frustrating the will of the voters. The undervotes alone, caused by machine malfunctions that we have had before, could change the outcome of the election. As you also know, Florida election law calls for a manual recount where one is appropriately requested and could change the outcome. This state has recounted votes as recently as the last election. I call on all counties in Florida, declared for either candidate, immediately to begin a hand recount of disputed ballots where one is requested, in accordance with procedure mandated by state law, and to carry on the recount with all deliberate speed until it is completed.'" And if pigs had wings...

"The latest crime of the stolen 2000 Presidential election is blaming the victim of the stolen election - Al Gore - for the numerous illegal acts committed by the Bush campaign and its surrogates in their broad daylight theft of the Presidency. Both the evidence that Democrats.com has collected in its extensive investigation of the stolen election, and the election laws and procedures of the state of Florida, prove this 'blame the victim' attack to be totally wrong." So writes Nancy Kuhn.

Katherine Harris tried to crash the annual dinner of the high-society Tiger Bay Club in Sarasota, and got thrown out on her ear. Harris "wanted to hear former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the scheduled speaker. But she was turned away just inside the door by club President Marj Baldwin, a 77-year-old fellow Republican famed around town for her blunt, stick-to-the-rules style. Baldwin said the event was sold out and Harris knew that. Still, Baldwin said, Harris tried to get in through the wine store next to Michael's On East restaurant, before asking if she could pay membership dues and get a seat... 'I don't have that much respect for Katherine because of the way she has conducted herself throughout the Senate and secretary of state campaigns,' Baldwin said. 'She broke a lot of rules.'" That's the understatement of the millenium!

In his BuzzFlash interview Michael Moore says, "The chapter that's received the most attention in the book - and I'm kind of surprised... - is the chapter "A Very American Coup"... We know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush. And if people read that - I mean, you should see some of the letters I've received - they have the sickest feeling in their gut... They cannot believe that the Bushes got away with this. And they're sick about it because they're Americans, because it goes against everything we believe in. Because they have people in their families who died for this country, for that very basic of rights, which is the right to vote and have your vote counted."

"On Jan. 29, [Kimberly Kelly's] supervisor informed her that the drug giant [Eli Lilly], after conducting a criminal-background check as part of new post-attack security measures, had decided to ban her and several other contract workers from its facilities. Her crime? In 2000, the 46-year-old single mother bounced a $60 check to a refrigerator-rental company... ChoicePoint, which in November launched a private database service offering multistate criminal-history checks, says the monthly volume of checks soared from 3,000 that first month to nearly 25,000 this February. ChoicePoint is performing Lilly's checks." Another employee, Sandy Snodgrass was terminated, but "when Mr. Snodgrass received his ChoicePoint report, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity." No wonder - Choicepoint is the firm Katherine Harris hired that misidentified scores of minority (and likely Gore) voters as felons, thus purging them from the registry. We demand a criminal investigation of Choicepoint!

In an online chat with members of Democrats.community, investigative journalist Greg Palast shared his trademark humor - and some intriguing revelations as well. Palast discussed his new book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." which covers the broad range of Palast's work. Topics include the Stolen Election (Palast uncovered Katherine Harris' Fraudulent Felon purge) ... Bush's interference with FBI efforts to trace Al Qaeda's roots in Saudi Arabia ... and Enron's criminal manipulation of California electricity prices. Palast's most dramatic revelation was that he has videotape proving that George W. Bush LOBBIED for Enron in 1988 - 6 years BEFORE he says he "really got to know" Bush! Stay tuned for an EXPLOSION when Greg reveals the videotape.

Florida's state pension fund lost $328 million on Enron stock - much of which was bought AFTER Enron began disclosing its massive problems in October 2001. The investment manager who lost all of this money was Alfred Harrison of Alliance Capital. Was Harrison trying to prop up Enron's stock, and did Jeb Bush let him? Harrison met with Enron's top executives at least 10 times - was he conned or bribed? Jeb denies any involvement, but Jeb's appointees oversaw the investments - including Coleman Stipanovich, brother of 'Mac' Stipanovich – the Tallahassee lobbyist who masterminded Katherine Harris' theft of Election 2000. (The NY Times left Stipanovich's name out of its story - e-mail wayne@nytimes.com to ask why.) We demand a Special Prosecutor!

After 18 months of research, Greg Palast has obtained the "scrub list" that Katherine Harris and her predecessor sent to county officials to remove "felons." Highlighted examples include "David Butler," a name which appears 77 times in Florida phone books; Thomas Cooper, flagged for a conviction in 2007 (!); Rev. Willie Dixon, scrubbed despite a rare official pardon; and Johnny Jackson Jr., who never went to Texas but matched the name of a Texas felon; and Wallace McDonald, who was scrubbed for the misdemeanor of sleeping on a bus-stop bench in 1959. "Of the 'matches' on these lists, the civil-rights commission estimated that at least 14 percent - or 8,000 voters, nearly 15 times Bush's official margin of victory - were false." No corporate media outlet has ever reported on the felon purge - because it proves Jeb helped George steal Florida in a "high-tech" stolen election.

Democrats.com will host an online chat on March 8 with Greg Palast, author of the brand new book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Palast is America's leading investigative reporter, but he works in exile from London because no US corporate media outlet wants to pay him to expose corruption in America's inner circles of power. Democrats.com has frequently cited Palast's exposes, including his discovery of Katherine Harris' fraudulent felon purge in Florida, a crime for which she still has not been punished. The chat will be at our regular time, 8 pm EST. To participate, first register as a member of Democrats.community.

On 7-15-01, NY Times reporters David Barstow and Don Van Natta Jr. documented how the Bush campaign pressured numerous Florida counties to count illegal overseas military ballots. A thorough statistical analysis of this data estimates that Bush gained 286 votes as a result of this massive fraud. Without those 286 illegal votes, the Florida Supreme Court would have declared Gore the winner on 12-8-00, when it overruled Katherine Harris and accepted the results of partial recounts from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade and cut Bush's lead to 154. These 286 votes also put Gore over the top in most of the media recount scenarios.

In the dark of night, some Republican evildoers slipped a photo ID requirement into S. 565, the bill intended to fix some of the 2000 election problems. There is no justification for this requirement - it simply more of the Gestapo mentality of the GOP: "Your papers, please!" The only terrorists that were ever spotted in America's election precincts worked for Katherine Harris. Send a free fax to Congress (don't worry - it's much more boring than this) courtesy of the ACLU.

"Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, wanted a lawsuit against her thrown out, but a judge has decided to let the case go trial. The NAACP and four other groups filed suit against Harris (pictured), a former state election chief, and the county elections supervisor. The suit charges that black voters were disenfranchised during the 2000 presidential election." Thanks to all our members who turned out in support of the NAACP's suit!

"This critical lawsuit challenges voting irregularities that occurred in Florida during the November 2000 election. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the NAACP and Black voters in the State of Florida On February 15, 2002, the defendants (Katherine Harris, State Elections Chief Clay Roberts and County Election Supervisors), will ask U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold to dismiss the case. Fellow Floridians, we were ALL disenfranchised. Stand up by being there to support the efforts to make sure another election fiasco does not occur. Friday, February 15, 2002 - 9:30 A.M. U.S. District Courthouse 301 N. Miami 10th Floor, Courtroom 10 Miami, Florida. BE THERE! SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FLORIDA!! Or it WILL happen again!"

"The state Board of Administration fired Alliance Capital Management Corp. last month, saying it was troubled by the New York financial adviser's decision to continue buying Enron shares for the fund after indications of the company's financial problems became public. One of Alliance's executives, Frank Savage, was also a board member of Enron and a major contributor to political campaigns…'We've been investigating,'' said Coleman Stipanovich, deputy executive director of the State Board of Administration, which oversees the pension fund. 'If Alliance did anything improper or was unduly influenced by Savage, we could sue Alliance, but we have made no decision on that'… Stipanovich said state officials did not learn until late last year of Savage's tie to Enron." Hold the phone! A Jeb Bush appointee -- Coleman is the brother of 'Mac' Stiponovich – the Tallahassee lobbyist who masterminded Katherine Harris' moves to steal the election. Both brothers served key roles in Jeb's campaigns.

The Republican National Committee is meeting in Austin, and there are Enron connections everywhere! The host is Gov. Rick Perry, who appointed an Enron executive from Mexico to run Texas's energy commission... the new RNC chair will be Marc Racicot, Enron's top lobbyist... and Karl "Goebbels" Rove is giving a speech, no doubt to brag about selling $250,000 worth of Enron stock just before it tanked. But just because Enrongate is in the headlines, that does not mean Floridagate has been forgotten. As an extra bonus, Florida's Katherine Harris will be there to help Tom "Adolph" DeLay steal a few Congressional seats in the next election!

Katherine Harris refused to let Florida officials create a system for correctly purging ineligible felons, and instead hired yet another private company. "A preliminary sampling last month of data on 1,328 people from seven counties identified by FDLE as felons found that 5.3 percent were incorrectly tagged as ineligible to vote." Sounds like just enough votes to steal a close election for her hero, Jeb Bush. Democrats will need a massive GOTV effort in 2002 - not just in Florida, but everywhere in the USA.

Using data from revised state totals, the FEC now has the definitive official results of Election 2000. In the popular vote, Gore beat Bush 50,999,897 to 50,456,002, a margin of 543,895. Gore had the second highest vote total in history, behind Reagan in 1984. The only reason Bush occupies the White House is because he stole Florida's 25 electoral votes with the help of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the US Supreme Court. We will never get over it!

One of the most important criminal actions taken by Katherine Harris to steal the Presidency was the fraudulent purge of thousands of alleged "felons" using a private vendor with Republican connections that was instructed to intentionally remove qualified voters. Did she learn her lesson? Yes - big-time! Having gotten away with stealing the last election, she's now planning to steal the next one, by hiring ANOTHER firm with Republican connections to maintain a list of ALL voters, not just "felons." No doubt, the verbal contract instructs the company to figure out ways to purge all of the Democrats they missed the last time around! Who will stop Katherine Harris, the Destroyer of Democracy???

The Tallahassee Democrat reports: "Secretary of State Katherine Harris 'is simply not interested' in her job and fired her chief troubleshooter for bringing her bad news as she started to run for Congress, the ousted official said Monday. In a 'whistle-blower' complaint filed with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, Dwight Chastain said it was his job as the Department of State's inspector general to brief Harris personally on investigations and suspected rule violations. He said he was blocked by Assistant Secretary Dave Mann and lost his job after reporting what he considered misuse of about $500,000 in licensing trust funds." Remember, Harris belongs in jail - not in Congress!

The Media Consortium's "proclamation" that its recount shows that Bush won has produced considerable confusion. Here's an excellent concise refutation of the consortium's Big Lie. "Gore didn't actually get what he asked for. He requested a liberal standard of voter intent, but Palm Beach - acting on the advice of Katherine Harris's lawyer - imposed a narrow standard instead. More importantly, Gore did belatedly ask Bush to agree to a statewide count, and Bush refused the offer. But even if none of this were true - even if Gore had never asked for what the Florida voters deserved - it would not make what happened any less of a travesty. The important rights at stake, after all, are those of the voters, not those of the candidates. And the voters have a right to the most accurate determination of their intent possible - regardless of which candidate has the better legal staff." Always remember - it's OUR votes!

Following the long-awaited recount of Florida's Presidential ballots, Democrats.com declared Gore the winner of the 2000 election and launched a "Democracy in 2002" campaign to sweep Democrats into office across America in the next election. According to Democrats.com co-founder Bob Fertik, "It has taken more than a year, but we have finally learned the truth about Florida - that if all of the votes had been counted, Al Gore would be President. The only reason George W. Bush was sworn into office is because his campaign adamantly refused to count all of the votes. To put it simply: George W. Bush stole Florida with the help of his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, his campaign co-chair, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and a partisan Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. The 30,000 members of Democrats.com are proud to declare that we will NEVER 'get over' the Stolen Election."

We waited for more than a year for 175,000 uncounted votes to be counted. Now the results are in, and the facts show that Al Gore won Florida. But Republicans and the corporate media cannot allow the public to see the truth - that Gore won and Bush lost - because that would expose the Presidency of George W. Bush as illegitimate. So the same people who helped Bush steal the Presidency are now trying to steal the Truth. This page is dedicated to exposing the monumental efforts by the media to distort the truth: that Al Gore won, and George Bush stole the Presidency with the help of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the TV networks.

One year ago, George W. Bush stole the Presidency with the help of his brother Jeb Bush, his Florida campaign co-chair Katherine Harris, and a Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Should we just 'Get Over It' - or should we fully investigate the crimes that were committed by Republicans in Florida, punish the criminals to the fullest extent of the law, and sweep all Republicans out of office in upcoming elections? (Registration required to vote.)

For a year, the Miami Herald has been blaming voting machines - primarily punchcard systems - for most of Florida's 175,000 uncounted votes. Suddenly, a year later, the Herald has changed its story, and now blames "poorly designed ballots." "Those troublesome ballots, used in 18 counties, had presidential candidates broken into two columns or spread over two pages." Well, duh! The whole world knew about Teresa LePore's "Butterfly Ballot" on November 8, 2000. This and the other confusing ballot designs were ILLEGAL and should have been vetoed by Secretary of Katherine Harris, but she was too busy taking first class trips around the globe to enforce Florida's election laws. Just one more reason why Harris should be indicted, not elected!

Researcher Paul Lukasiak has compiled the DEFINITIVE analysis proving Al Gore won Florida. Lukasiak shows: 1) over 10,000 Gore votes were lost through bad ballot design, 2) 45,000 more people went to the polls in Florida to voter for Gore than for Bush, 3) Gore lost over 500 net votes because some election officials illegally refused to count prescribed legal votes, 4) selective 'hand counting' in mostly Republican controlled counties gave Bush an extra 3000+ votes, 5) Bush's 'victory' was based solely on the illegal use of different standards for counting ballots within counties themselves as well as statewide, 6) Katherine Harris deliberately ignored both the State Constitution's guarantee of equal protection, as well as the specific statutory requirement that she personally ensure that election laws were applied consistently throughout the state. Send this article to every reporter you know!

On Saturday, the NY Times declared that Congressional Democrats were thrilled to have George W. Bush leading America's War Against Terrorism. "Bush Winning Gore Backers' High Praises," announced the story by Richard Berke. He writes, "Many Democrats who once dismissed Mr. Bush as too naïve and too dependent on advisers to steer the United States through an international crisis are now praising his and his advisers' performance. Some are even privately expressing satisfaction that Mr. Gore, who tried to make his foreign affairs expertise an issue in the campaign, did not win." My response can be summarized in one simple expletive: bull.

When Democrats wanted Florida election officials to manually examine ballots that were rejected by tabulating machines, Republicans SCREAMED that machines were infallible, while humans were completely incompetent. Republicans pushed this outrageous propaganda campaign all the way to the US Supreme Court, which used this Big Lie to block a state-wide manual recount. Now, a year later, Katherine Harris admits that manual recounts are IN FACT superior to machines. Harris' new rules simply lay out what law-abiding counties SHOULD have done in the LAST election. And many Republican counties did so - and Harris accepted those manually counted votes - but Harris deliberately refused to let Democratic counties in South Florida count the same votes, so she could STEAL the election for Bush. This is why Harris belongs in jail, not Congress.

Our distinguished friends, the "freepers" at freerepublic.com, just think the WORLD of Katherine Harris. (And why shouldn't they? She single-handedly stole the election for their boy George.) So they defended her integrity on our petition calling for her indictment (http://www.petitiononline.com/ddc21/petition.html), with comments like this: "I'd love to come to Florida and kick you're socialists c*nts out your nose." If you're interested in how these patriotic Americans think, spend a few minutes in their company. And if you want to help us continue to build a progressive Democratic alternative to this and other hate-filled sites, take a moment to visit http://democrats.com/donate

Writes the Village Voice's Donna Ladd: "'Katherine Harris belongs in jail, not the U.S. Congress,' wrote Democrats.com founder Bob Fertik... Harris violated a list of state and federal laws including the Votings Rights Act, the Ballot Design Law, and the American With Disabilities Act. They are collecting signatures (and donations) to encourage Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs to bring up charges against Harris on 14 points associated with the 2000 presidential election. For one, Harris contracted with a private company for a 'fraudulent felon purge,' costing Democrat Al Gore thousands of votes, the group alleges. [She] allowed Republican operatives to work inside her office, draft speeches for her, and coordinate with Bush-Cheney attorneys on interpretation of election laws. And she allowed county canvassing boards to count 680 clearly illegal overseas military ballots, including some cast after Election Day."

While the nation still grieves, Katherine Harris announced her candidacy for the U.S. Congress, bringing back all of the leftover anger from the Stolen Election. By our count, Harris has committed nearly 20 specific crimes while serving as Florida's Secretary of State, which are documented here. Either we are a country of laws, or we are not. We call upon Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth (The Capitol Tallahassee, FL 32399-1050, phone 850-487-1963) and Leon County (Tallahassee) State Attorney Willie Meggs (301 South Monroe St. #475, Tallahassee FL 32399, phone 850-488-6701) to hold Katherine Harris accountable for her actions. Sign the petition to indict Katherine Harris!

"Amid the shambles of Florida's presidential election, one of Secretary of State Katherine Harris' lame excuses was that there hadn't been enough money for voter education. The auditor general has now disclosed one possible reason: Foreign travel by Harris' Latin American consultant had been charged improperly to the division of elections. Further, Harris' department 'routinely' billed expenses to the wrong accounts, often flew first-class to foreign cities at the taxpayers' expense and failed to monitor its 55 cellular telephones for personal use... Florida Republican leaders need to seriously reassess the wisdom of her campaign for Congress. The record in Tallahassee does not commend Katherine the Great." So writes the St. Petersburg Times.

According to the Palm Beach Post, "Florida is under a state of emergency, legislators are considering closing committee meetings, and routine public records are being withheld in the name of a massive federal terrorism investigation. In the two weeks since suicide attacks killed thousands, civil libertarians are growing worried that Florida's ironclad Government-in-the-Sunshine Law -- the most open in the nation -- could become collateral damage. 'I understand the fear because I'm afraid. But this rush to close access doesn't do us any good,' said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. 'At this time of national crisis, it's more important than ever that we know how well our government is functioning.' Petersen's concerns weren't eased Monday evening when House and Senate leaders announced the creation of special 'security' committees assigned to coordinate Florida's response to the national emergency."

Mellon Bank's tax check-processing managers must have learned their trade in the Florida Secretary of State's office. When there were too many checks to handle, did they take the extra time to "count every check"? Nah, they just tossed them out. Mellon "was so pressed to finish processing hundreds of thousands of federal tax returns by April 29 that it tapped workers from the bank's One Mellon headquarters to help out, an employee familiar with the operation said. If it failed to meet the deadline, the bank would be hit with a penalty -- the size of which neither the IRS nor the bank would disclose -- and supervisory workers in the department wouldn't receive bonuses....an internal probe found that returns were hidden and in some cases destroyed. But the bank has not commented about what happened beyond that." Maybe they should hire Katherine Harris to explain it all to the American people!

The Republican Party of Florida is up in arms because Leon County Commissioner Cliff Thaell, a Democrat, used his county e-mail address to post a single letter of support for gubernatorial candidate Pete Peterson. This is the same Republican Party whose Governor and Secretary of State used their offices in countless ways to steal the Presidency. Tell reporter David Twiddy (drtwiddy@taldem.com) you are outraged - and want a FULL investigation of the abuses of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris' offices to steal the presidency.

The Tallahassee Democrat is one of many newspapers across the country that calls itself "Democrat," but has no detectable connection to the Democratic Party or its principles. Still, we were happy that TalDem reporter Nancy Lauer followed up on the Democrats.com expose by Paul Lukasiak (http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=4169) about Florida's NEW Secret Felon Purge. Once again, Katherine Harris' office told Lauer that Harris doesn't "intend" to enforce the law. But who can believe anything Katherine Harris says? We demand a clear and unambiguous written declaration - with no hanging or dimpled chads! And we also want to know WHO inserted this secret provision into the law?

Denver Post columnist Diane Carman has an important scoop: "Coloradans, please welcome that darling of disenfranchisement, one of the country's leading supporters of airline travel at public expense, the countess of chad herself, Katherine Harris. The secretary of state of Florida will be the keynote speaker for the Restoration Weekend, a public policy conference at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. In some circles - including that one - she's a national hero. This is the woman who brought her skills as a commercial real estate broker and granddaughter of a cattle and citrus mogul to the office charged with managing the state's elections and developing historical and cultural exhibitions. Her record speaks for itself." Given Harris' responsibility for ensuring fair elections in Florida - and her appalling failure to do so - it is a scandal that she is keynoting a right-wing political event. Where is the outrage?

Rep. Joe Scarborough, whose 28-year-old aide Lori Klausutis was found dead in July, is in the process of quitting Congress to "spend more time with his family." His unusual mid-term resignation led to a special election, starting with a primary on July 24. Once again, the winner (State Rep. Jeff Miller) was "selected" by - you guessed it - Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris. Only this time, they screwed a bunch of competing Republican candidates, who refuse to get over it. Rev. David Reddick, a right-wing pastor and talk show host, has filed a lawsuit, and other candidates may follow. It just goes to show - there IS no honor among thieves.

Katherine Harris has insisted that the three GOP operatives who ran a partisan "war room" out of her non-partisan office were "volunteers." But once again Katherine Harris has been caught lying, because she agreed to pay one of them - Adam Goodman - $12,000 for his work during the recount. And Goodman's correspondence leaves no doubt as to the nature of their relationship: instead of trying to objectively apply Florida election law, he and Katherine were working to "rock the world" - GOPspeak for stealing the election for Bush. Harris refused to pay Goodman from her political funds, because his work for her was in her "official" capacity. This means Harris intentionally used her office to hire a GOP operative to help her steal the Presidency. We demand an investigation!

If Mr. Bush and his cohorts are unable to guide our nation back to truth and democracy, and if our Democratic leaders are not powerful enough to ensure that formal investigations are launched, we may have only one alternative left. To adhere to the rule of law, and to reclaim and restore our democracy - we must resort to a Citizens' Arrest of George W., Jeb, Katherine, et. al.

Katherine Harris will be swinging through the Midwest in September - as a featured guest at Republican fundraisers! Republicans are so proud of her efforts to STEAL elections that they will give as much as $2,500 to shake her felonious hand. She'll be in Minnesota on 9/14, with stops in Iowa and Michigan. It's time to start planning those protests - how 'bout having Cruella look-alike contests at each stop?

Poor Katherine Harris! The mere suggestion that she stole the election reduces her to tears. But when it comes to proving her innocence, she leaves us high and dry. Under cross-examination, she now admits that her much-touted "firewall" between official duties and politics ONLY referred to the 36-day recount. But even THEN she had 3 GOP operatives working in her office - Mac Stipanovich, Adam Goodman, and her unnamed campaign manager, whose AOL name is GOPspinner - a 100% pure partisan hack! PLUS "there may have been communication over legal strategies between Harris' legal team and top members of Bush's legal team." SAY WHAT??? Were Harris' lawyers CONSPIRING with Bush's lawyers to STEAL the election? We demand an investigation!

When Katherine Harris was elected and moved to Tallahassee, she registered to vote - but her old registration remained active for 7 months. At the same time, Harris' office was illegally purging thousands of valid voters, mostly Democrats and many black. "I guess they had a computer program that only purged Democrats," said Tony Welch, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party. "When they can't even catch a problem with the top elections officer in the state, that's just sad." And one more reason why Katherine Harris should resign.

After evidence revealed that Katherine Harris intentionally misled Floridians about the illegal use of her office for the Bush campaign, Florida Democratic Party Chairman Bob Poe called for Katherine Harris' resignation on Wednesday. "Secretary Harris illegally used her office to benefit the Bush campaign and to call the race for George W. Bush long before she knew results of the Palm Beach County recount... Katherine Harris has violated the public trust with the Florida voters and proven she is not capable of being an impartial Secretary of State. It's time for her to end the charade and the nightmare of her tenure and simply resign." You go, Bob!

Here are some of the political activities conducted on Harris' computer. 1) On 1/29/00, a speech written for a Republican meeting that declared: "We are READY TO LEAD!" 2) On 3/14/00, a set of campaign talking points for George W. Bush. 3) On 11/14/00, an examination of the campaign finances of FL Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente - who was reviewing important election cases. 4) A list of contributors to Harris' 1998 Democratic opponent, Karen Gievers (undated). Item #3 proves that Harris lied when she declared: "no partisan political activity transpired in my office during the recount period." And from #1, here's the clincher that perfectly sums up Harris' role in stealing the election: "I am a bit biased - after all - I co-chair the campaign effort of George W. Bush." Thanks, Katherine - we'll engrave that on your jail cell door.

Katherine Harris has insisted that her office was never used for partisan Republican politics, claiming repeatedly that she had erected "a firewall" between her state office and the Republican Party. So when computer technicians found a campaign speech praising George W. Bush on one of Harris' computers, Harris' office lied and said it was merely received on that computer, not written on it. But Harris' former Communications Director, Donald Tighe, admitted he wrote the Bush campaign propaganda on Harris' computer. We demand Harris' resignation for lying to the American people!

The Florida Supreme Court ordered Katherine Harris to accept the Palm Beach recount until 5 pm on Sunday November 26 or on Monday at 9 am. But at 1:30 pm on Sunday, GOP operatives in Harris' office had already written speeches rejecting the court-ordered recount as "unlawful" and declaring Bush the winner, according to documents from her computers recovered by The Palm Beach Post. At 5 pm, Harris in fact rejected the recount because it was two hours from completion, even though Harris could have accepted the completed returns the following morning. On December 9, the Florida Supreme Court overruled Harris and ordered her to include 383 additional votes for Gore in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, reducing Bush's lead to 154 and ordering a state-wide count of undervotes. That's when the Felonious Five of the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to declare Bush the winner, contrary to all applicable law and the US Constitution. It is now clear that the Republicans were DETERMINED to steal Florida.

Robert Kunst of the Oral Majority is taking on Florida by running for Governor against Jeb and his mockery machine of justice. Kunst is interviewed by Meria Heller on his campaign (and the media blackout - what are they so afraid of?), 152 protests since the STOLEN ELECTION, lawsuits against the Tampa Police; the Big Brother attempt of cameras on the streets of Tampa, faith based collusion of church and state, and much more. Where DID Jeb get $175 million? What is Katherine Harris' connection to the supposed Canker disease in Florida's Citrus trees? Is it connected to Enron Corporation or the building of 57 new power plants? How did a German Construction Company "building for the Fuhrer" get the contract on the WW II memorial?

Clay Roberts, who directs Florida's Division of Elections for Secretary of State Katherine Harris, is personally responsible for the fraudulent felon purge that illegally disenfranchised thousands of voters, most of whom were Democrats and black. Roberts belongs in jail for those activities. But according to Salon, Roberts is now fighting his fellow Republicans in the state senate who want future felon purges handled by Florida's county clerks, rather than by Harris and Roberts. Katherine Harris should fire Clay Roberts immediately, and Jeb Bush should urge the Florida legislature to join the rest of the country in allowing ex-felons to vote.

There she goes again! Theresa LePore recently "wiped out computer files showing how each ballot was punched in the presidential election, removing that information from the public domain even as scholars and journalists continue to analyze the results of Florida's presidential voting... The erasure is an unexpected blow to advocates of election reform because of the data's historical value. By wiping out the records, the elections staff also may have violated Florida's strict rules against destroying public records." C'mon Theresa - why don't you resign already and put Palm Beach - and America - out of its misery? We demand that Katherine Harris order the immediate safeguarding of ALL public records concerning the 2000 election - including the records of state offices (including Jeb's) and all county offices.

FL "Secretary of State Katherine Harris won't allow computer investigators hired by several Florida newspapers to monitor the work of a computer scientist hired by her... A consortium of newspapers is seeking access to the hard drives of two computers at the Department of State used by two Republican strategists during Florida's famed election recount, which gave George W. Bush the presidency by 537 votes... Ramakrishna Gummadi, researcher with the computer science department at the University of California at Berkeley, said it is not difficult to erase material from a computer's hard drive and that, without constant monitoring of an inspection, 'you could lose data completely.'" Florida media, this is a RED ALERT! Don't let Harris SCRUB those hard drives!

"The Florida Democratic Party wants to have a representative present when a computer expert checks hard drives in Secretary of State Katherine Harris' office for erased files. Harris said Wednesday she would allow the media to inspect computer hard drives in her office, following allegations she may have allowed information sought by reporters to be erased from them. But she said she would have a computer expert chosen by her office test the computers first to 'verify that no public records created on these two computers were destroyed.' Democratic Party lawyer Karen Gievers wrote to Harris Thursday asking for a Democratic representative to be there when the expert, a consultant named Bill Morgan, tests the drives." Democrats need to watch Harris like a hawk!

As always, we are in awe of the quality of the letters we have received from our incredibly caring, morally passionate readers. Alas, the insight and intelligence in your comments stands in painful contrast to the double-digit quality of the "bright lights" now "illuminating" the White House.

Katherine Harris may be the most lawless public official in America. Whenever a question of law is raised, she interprets it in one and only one way - the way that helps her and the Republicans. Harris did this repeatedly during the Florida recount, and should be impeached for those actions. Harris now claims e-mail sent from her office computers are NOT public records, unless SHE says they are. Sorry, Katherine, no one ever elected you Empress.

Theresa LePore designed the butterfly ballot that resulted in nearly 20,000 "overvotes" and cost Al Gore the presidency. Yet neither she, Katherine Harris, nor any other election official has been prosecuted - YET - for their misdeeds. But when someone played a joke on LePore and successfully registered a poodle, LePore goes running to the local prosecutor and threatens a felony indictment. Hey Theresa, why don't you go after the REAL criminals who stole the 2000 election?

The NY Times exposed that Republican hacks "Mac" Stipanovich and Adam Goodman wrote crucial memos for Harris to deliberately misinterpret Florida law to count overseas military ballots lacking postmarks. But Harris refuses to provide details, and newspapers are pissed. "Katherine Harris apparently is willing to violate Florida's public records laws to avoid scrutiny of the activities of two Republican operatives who came to work in Harris' offices during the 36-day presidential recount period... Now Harris' office says some of the withheld material may have been erased when the computers were 'reformatted' for other uses. That's convenient. But all the selective editing and erasing raises an important question: What doesn't Harris want Floridians to see? ... The appearance of impropriety hardly could be more striking."

On Sunday, the NY Times reported that Katherine Harris issued carefully-worded instructions on November 13, 2000 that were deliberately intended to help Republicans. The instructions gave Republican lawyers ammunition to pressure county officials into counting overseas absentee ballots that were illegal because they lacked postmarks. Now Harris has told the Times that she clarified her instructions on November 13. But Harris cannot produce the November 14 document, and her staff refuses to respond to repeated requests. It looks like Harris has been caught lying one more time!

Terry Gross, host of "Fresh Air" on NPR, is one of the best interviewers on the radio. Gross interviewed NY Times reporters David Barstow and Don Van Natta Jr. at length about their recent expose on Bush's overseas military ballot fraud. GOP spinmeisters have insisted the 680 illegal ballots would NOT have affected the outcome of the election. But the reporters make clear that Gore would have won if either: a) all of the overseas ballots were thrown out, following previous court precedents involving tainted absentee ballots, or b) if Katherine Harris had given a similar "benefit of the doubt" to Palm Beach officials, whose 174 additional votes for Gore were rejected because Harris refused to accept them the following morning.

According to the NY Times, political henchmen J.M. Stipanovich and Adam Goodman illegally ran a Republican "war room" out of Secretary of State Katherine Harris' office, using office computers. The Times reported that Harris' lawyers "now say many of the records have been erased, a potential violation of Florida's public records law." According to the St. Petersburg Times, Harris now insists "no public records were erased," but she still refuses to let reporters examine the computers. What is Harris hiding? We demand the release of ALL of Katherine Harris' records about the stolen election!

According to Sunday's expose by the NY Times, Republicans ran an illegal "war room" out of Katherine Harris' office during the recount battle to steal the election. According to DNC spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri, Dems will subpoena Harris' records. "It's outrageous," said Palimeri. "The secretary of state was running a Republican war room out of her office with the presidency of the United States at stake? It's just outrageous. The media has become anesthetized to this type of activity from the Bush campaign and aren't paying as serious attention we think this story deserves." [Note to Salon: Bush's margin of victory was 537 votes ACCORDING TO HARRIS, but the Florida Supreme Court reduced that lead to 154 on 12/8. Subtract Bush's 292 illegal overseas votes, and Gore wins by 138.]

In the wake of the NY Times expose, Democrats called for further investigations and possible prosecutions. In Washington, Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-FL) called for an ethics inquiry into Rep. Steve Buyer's (R-IN) politicization of the military. "It's shocking. It's scary. And it's also illegal and a violation of his trust as an elected official. When you think it can't get any more shocking, it gets more shocking." In Florida, Democratic state chair Bob Poe said "We have to look at trying to see if criminal action needs to be taken against Katherine Harris, particularly for the destruction of public records." Hey guys, don't make the mistake of treating the various crimes in isolation. Deal with the whole terrifying fact that there was a CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY TO STEAL THE PRESIDENCY!

On Sunday, NY Times investigative reporters David Barstow and Don Van Natta Jr. exposed a comprehensive Republican plan - run from Katherine Harris' office - to steal the Presidential election by misleading, pressuring, and even intimidating county election officials into counting ILLEGAL Republican absentee ballots. This plan included ILLEGALLY using Congressional offices to ILLEGALLY enlist active duty military personnel into a partisan Republican propaganda campaign. This conspiracy by top officials to use their power to break numerous laws constitutes FRAUD - and represents the most heinous attack on American Democracy since the Watergate break-in. Yet the Times' editorial board reduces this FRAUD to Democrats being "outhustled and outmaneuvered," as though crystal-clear election laws - and laws preventing the politicization of the military - were simply a game. This is an outrage! E-mail letters@nytimes.com and tell them to "Respect their Reporters and Call a Fraud a Fraud!"

In his often-reprinted "Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook," U. S. intelligence expert Edward Luttwak says that lack of reaction on the part of the people is all a coup needs to stay in power: "This lack of reaction is the key to the victory of the coup..." In his discussion of how coup leaders and beneficiaries exploit their "monopoly" of the mass media to discourage resistance to the coup, Luttwak speaks of making constant use of the "motif of isolation." This strategy must emphasize that "isolated" resistance is the product of the obstinacy of a few misguided or dishonest individuals. Furthermore, it must emphasize that law and order have been re-established which "should have the effect of making resistance appear as dangerous and useless." Now, considering these strategies, look at the White House reaction to the New York Times's findings.

As with previous exposes about the Stolen Election, NY Times editors twisted their conclusions to deny the facts uncovered by their own reporters. The Times says it "found no evidence of fraud" - but its reporters found that Republicans "mounted a legal and public relations campaign to persuade canvassing boards in Bush strongholds to waive the state's election laws." This was fraud - a conspiracy to persuade election officials to break the law. The conspiracy included threatening election officials with federal prosecution if they failed to count illegal ballots. And it included illegal contacts with active duty military personnel to politicize the recount and demonize the Democrats. Worst of all, this conspiracy operated out of Katherine Harris' office - the person who was responsible for ENFORCING Florida's election law! E-mail letters@nytimes.com and tell them to publish the truth - that Bush won through FRAUD!

A 6-month investigation by the NY Times reveals that the Bush campaign and Florida Republicans mounted a massive legal and PR blitz to count ILLEGAL overseas absentee ballots from Republican counties, while disqualifying all questionable ballots in Democratic areas. The effort included illegal enlistment of active military personnel in a PR campaign to demonize Democrats, and the intimidation of election officials into counting illegal votes. This criminal effort was run out of a Tallahassee "war room" in the office of Katherine Harris, which in itself was criminal. Now Harris' computers have been "scrubbed," adding "obstruction of justice" and "coverup" to the list of Republican crimes. The overseas absentee effort added 292 votes to Bush's margin, which were ultimately decisive - without these votes, the Florida Supreme Court would have declared Gore the winner by 138 votes. We demand Bush's resignation!

Florida's economic development agency, often cited as an example of how government can run like a corporation, treats its top executives to bonuses and lavish travel - while making grants to businesses whose officers sit on its boards. Comptroller Bob Milligan's auditors said Wednesday that officials of Enterprise Florida Inc. set up a $2.38 million "private bank account" to cover exclusive club memberships, lobbying expenses and extra pay for leaders of the Orlando-based operation.

Greg Palast is one of the last true investigative reporters. He discovered the smoking gun used by the Bush team in their theft of the Florida election. Palast reported in "The Nation" that a firm hired by Katherine Harris purged thousands of African Americans -- and therefore likely Gore voters -- from the voter registry. Mr. Palast has also reported on the energy problems in California as a result of deregulation and price gouging by the energy sector. Lately, Mr. Palast's newspaper -- the London Observer --is being sued by Barrick Gold Mining for Palast's story about Barrick's human rights abuses in Tanzania. Palast also described how Barrick paid only $10,000 for $10 billion worth of gold mine rights, thanks to a deal finessed by the previous Bush administration. After leaving office, Bush Sr. was put on the Barrick payroll. Palast will be interviewed by Meria Heller on Tues. July 3rd, 1 pm EST. Following the initial webcast, an archive of the program can be played anytime.

Poor, poor Cruella De Harris! She thinks she may have been the victim of actions motivated by political bias. Imagine that! But guess she's the expert. Harris's response to the findings of the Civil Rights Commission on Florida's disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters in the 2000 election was a grab bag of accusations: the CRC is just trying to fan racial tensions...the panel's chairwoman voted for Al Gore...the CRC isn't focusing enough on renovating the election system...they leaked their results too soon...whine, whine, whine. Of course, she got to vent through Rev. Moon's right-wing mouthpiece, the 'Washington Times.' By the way, we hear Harris is considering running for Congress! We're not surprised - she sure makes the grade under the tough new GOP standards for heavy-duty hypocrisy, corporate brown-nosing, and high-powered whining.

"Five elderly Clevelanders last fall entrusted their votes to an election worker whose job was to assist them in marking their ballots. Unbeknownst to them, their votes for Al Gore were marked as votes for George Bush, according to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office. Now the man accused of not recording their votes according to their wishes is under indictment. John V. Jackson, who was a temporary worker at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, was indicted yesterday on felony charges that he tampered with ballots in last fall's General Election." Jackson could get 18 months in prison for each count - 7.5 years total. In that case, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris should get about 1 MILLION years for all of the ballot tampering under their watch!

In 1998, the state legislature mysteriously allocated over $4 million for a future felong purge. Why was it so expensive? Whoever knows the answer won't talk about it. We demand an investigation!

In its recent book, "The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage," the Herald points to machine problems as the real unsung culprit. I had reached the same conclusion after having the opportunity to look at ballots: machine problems played the major role in ballot spoilage that resulted in enough undercounted ballots to have given Gore the election. Let's "move on" to determining if rampant machine problems were a reflection of benign indifference and incompetence - or felonious actions on the part of election officials.

State House Democratic Leader Lois Frankel said the Civil Rights Commission's report provided "enough ammunition to justify investigations into voting irregularities" in Florida. Frankel sent a letter requesting formal investigations to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, Gov. Jeb Bush, Secretary of State Katherine Harris and legislative leaders. The Justice Department claims to be investigating, but John Ashcroft's record of denying civil rights to blacks as Governor of Missouri should disqualify him from any investigation.

"Some state Republican officials, including Gov. Jeb Bush, chose to dismiss the report out of hand because commission chairwoman Mary Frances Berry and some other members supported Democrat Al Gore's presidential campaign. That's not good enough. The report's specific findings and recommendations deserve a detailed response from the governor, Secretary of State Katherine Harris and other relevant state officials... The report also details significant flaws in the Florida vote that should be familiar to anyone who has paid attention since November. It reinforces the evidence that thousands of Floridians were denied their right to vote as a result of outdated equipment, inaccurate voter lists, inadequate access and other flaws. The report also documents the extent to which poor and minority voters were disproportionately disenfranchised." So writes the St. Petersburg Times.

When we asked readers to tell us what they thought about "getting over" the stolen election and what should be done to right this huge, history-bending wrong, the response was immediate and powerful! It is obvious that the "indifference" of the public is a myth intentionally created by the corporate media to build a wall of smoke and mirrors around their phony president. But your letters unmask the lie and show that a massive ground swell of rebellion against the crimes committed by Bush and the Supreme Court is gaining momentum! Power BACK to the People!!!

Grandmother Suni continued, "With that, all H__L broke loose. A police officer came and told us we had to leave. We said we had a right to be there. We said other people were holding signs much bigger than ours. Large poster signs flashed all around the stadium for Bush. We had a right to be there as well as anyone else. We had tickets. We didn't do anything wrong. Why were they taking us away - in handcuffs? All we did was show our small signs. I just couldn't believe it."

Are you sick of hearing "Just get over it" from every Republican drone and conservative media pundit you encounter? They just don't get it - a CRIME has been committed here. No one has asked us to "just get over" the Oklahoma bombing or any other crime of national proportions. Even some third world dictatorial countries we assume ourselves to be superior to wonder why we have allowed this travesty to continue without complaint. But Bush and company want everyone to pretend it's business as usual and, outrageously, the press and our own representatives in Washington are joining in the masquerade! Here's your chance to give the world your take on this crime.

Can we ever fully entrust our precious democracy to imperfect technology? Or should we recognize that democracy is fundamentally NOT a problem of technology. Rather, Democracy is about giving people a chance to be heard. And the only way one person can be heard is if other people are listening. The capacity for listening is precious and uniquely human. We cannot delegate this activity to technology, because no matter how many MIPS they can process, computer chips will never truly "understand."

"Florida's conduct of the 2000 presidential election was marked by 'injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency' that unfairly penalized minority voters, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has concluded in a report that criticizes top state officials -- particularly Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- for allowing disparate treatment of voters. Unequal access to modern voting equipment and 'overzealous efforts' to purge state voter lists most harshly affected African Americans... Fifty-four percent of votes rejected during the Florida election were cast by black voters... African Americans accounted for 11 percent of voters statewide... African Americans were nearly 10 times as likely as whites to have their ballots rejected. Poor counties populated by minorities were more likely to use voting systems that rejected larger percentages of ballots than more affluent counties." So reports the Washington Post.

Back in March, Nightline blamed Duval County's black voters for their overvotes - without ever reporting how the ballot instructions that said to VOTE EVERY PAGE - while the Presidential candidates were spread over TWO PAGES. Tonight (June 5) they are doing a show on the Civil Rights Commission's stinging report about the "injustice, ineptitude, and inefficiency" of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris. Of course, Republicans don't want to talk about how Jeb and Katherine STOLE the election. So Karl Rove concocted this bogus story about the Commission's report being leaked - and the massive Republican propaganda machine has made this topic #1 on the talk shows. Once again, Nightline is fronting for Karl Rove, instead of reporting the REAL news - the damning conclusions of the Commission's report. Tell Nightline (niteline@abc.com) to report the news, not the Republican propaganda.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, a critical factor producing overvotes was a ballot design that split the 10 Presidential candidates over 2 columns - called a "wraparound" ballot. This design violated a "cardinal rule" of ballot design - never to split candidates in a single race by column or by page. The "wraparound" ballot was created by Katherine Harris' office, and was adopted by 14 of the 15 optical-scan counties examined by the Sentinel. This design error cost Gore 564 votes - enough to erase his 537-vote defeat.

The Washington Post has made a significant contribution to the unfinished investigation of Florida's stolen election. The Post documents various important instances of official misconduct, including: 1) 18 of 67 counties broke Florida law by never performing the mandatory machine recount; 2) Osceola County broke Federal law by not printing Spanish ballots; 3) Katherine Harris' office designed the confusing "wraparound" ballot; 4) "countless" motor voter registration forms were not processed; 5) Escambia and Manatee counties simply disabled the "instant check" feature on their optical scan equipment, causing huge error rates; 26 counties broke Florida law by not counting overvotes with write-ins; 6) Bush gained at least 176 votes among illegal military absentee ballots without postmarks and other requirements. The Post points the finger at Katherine Harris, who utterly failed to carry out her legal responsibility to "maintain uniformity" in the conduct of elections.

Happiness is a warm gun! That's apparently the new White House slogan. At the NRA convention, which bashed mothers against violence while lauding themselves openly for getting Shrub elected, keynote speaker Gale Norton chatted with Katherine Harris (no doubt snickering over all the crap they've gotten away with this year). Meanwhile, Charlton "Moses" Heston swore to remain NRA ringleader one more year (he likes the role of pontificating ass). There was nary a dry eye as a warm note was read from Shrub, praising the group for its help. Thus, a good ole boy time was had by all.

This may be a first - the Arizona Democratic Party is sponsoring a protest against Katherine Harris, who is visiting AZ to raise money for right-wing for Rep. J.D. Hayworth. Our hats off to the Arizona Democrats for showing party leaders how to stand up to the criminals who stole the 2000 election!

The Miami Herald completed its count of 111,261 overvotes, and Al Gore gained 682 votes among the 3% (3,146) where the intent of the voter was absolutely clear. "Generally, this occurred when voters chose a candidate and then cast a write-in vote for that same candidate," according to the Herald. Under Florida law, these votes are REQUIRED to be counted on Election Day. If these votes had been counted, Katherine Harris would have had to certify Gore as the winner on November 27 by 145 votes - without examining a single hanging chad in Palm Beach County. In addition, Gore beat Bush by 46,466 among the other 97% of the overvotes. These votes would have been clear votes if all of Florida's counties - not just the wealthiest - had used instant-check technology. We now know the truth: Al Gore won Florida, and Bush is not the legitimate President. Since Bush ran on "restoring honor and integrity to the White House," we are calling upon Bush to do the only honorable thing - RESIGN!

Politex at the Bushwatch writes the following. "Last week the Washington Post reported that New York Knicks guard Charlie Ward made anti-Semitic statements and that Florida governor Jeb Bush defended those statements. The Bush family has a history of being involved with anti-Semitic remarks, as you can see from the stories below." Ward was appointed by Katherine Harris -- the voters enemy -- as spokesman for Florida's "Born To Read" program. The American Jewish Congress has demanded that Harris remove Ward from that position. Meanwhile, Jeb has added another chapter to his family's history of defending, and even supporting, anti-Semitism. But it doesn't end with mere remarks, the Bushes have long allied themselves with Nazis. Read more about this troubling history at the Bushwatch page linked below or enter "nazi" in our "Compass" search engine.

On December 4, Greg Palast broke the story of Katherine Harris' felonious purge of so-called "felons" in Salon. That story was Salon's "Political Story of the Year." Palast has done additional reporting on the story for The Nation, the UK Guardian, and the BBC, and uncovered important details about the conscious and criminal efforts of Florida's top election officials to remove eligible voters from the voter registration lists. Amazingly, this story has NEVER been picked up by any mainstream US news organization. The ice may be cracking, however - the New York Times obliquely cited the story in an editorial complaining about the lack of progress on election reform. Memo to the Times: why don't you tell your readers about Palast's explosive story? Is it not "fit to print"? Or are you afraid that this one simple story would cause Bush's entire house of cards to collapse?

Nearly 6 months after Florida's election meltdown, the Republican Congress held its very first hearings on Election Reform. Katherine Harris pleaded for the Federal government to send money to the states to help pay for improvements, but Republicans insist on their "greed before need" budget. But the bigger scandal - which goes unreported in any US media outlet - is that Republicans really don't WANT Americans to vote. Interesting, this article makes clear that the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore is regarded as nothing more than a scheme to steal the 2000 election. Still, the ACLU has filed 4 lawsuits citing Bush v. Gore as a precedent for rejecting election systems that discriminate against lower-income voters.

Judge N. Sanders Sauls was criminally wrong on December 4, 2000, when he ruled that there was no "reasonable probability" that the outcome of the election could be changed by counting 14,000 uncounted ballots from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. In fact, Gore gained 784 from the Palm Beach Post's undervote count in Palm Beach alone - which would have made Gore the winner in Florida. As a reward for helping Bush steal Florida, Sauls is being honored by the Freepers in June, along with Katherine Harris. This has produced a storm of criticism from Florida newspapers. If you think it's wrong for a sitting judge to embrace a site that tolerates death threats against Democrats, join Media Whores Online in filing a complaint against Sauls with the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast broke the story about Florida's illegal felon purge, which certainly cost Gore the election. In an interview with Michael Rectenwald, founder of Citizens for a Legitimate Government, Palast revealed some new details from his coming PBS documentary, "The Calling." This includes more proof that Katherine Harris knowingly approved of "loose" matching standards for felons, which violated the civil rights of an unknown number of legal voters. He also disclosed that Jeb Bush's Clemency Board has been illegally scrubbing its files, including one letter dated 9/18/2000 of which Palast has a copy. Once again, we demand an investigation!

It has been more than three months since the U.S. Supreme Court violated all principles of law and stopped the counting of votes in Florida in order to declare George W. Bush the President of the United States. With the passage of time, we have learned many details about how Bush stole Florida, but the media remains adamantly opposed to examining these details. Here are some of the many crucial questions we believe the media needs to ask about the Florida election in order to find out the truth.

"If you count every vote, Gore wins." So says Doug Hattaway, a former Gore campaign spokesman. When USA Today declares "Newspapers' Recount Shows Bush Prevailed In Fla. Vote," they are simply lying.

I work as a graphic designer, and often I am tasked to create imagery that will invoke a certain type of emotion. In doing so, I will often consult work that has been done by others in order to get a sense for what types of images will invoke the particular feeling or feelings that I am trying to achieve. I was sitting in my study last night, evaluating some images from scenes of The Lion King, when I came to a stunning realization.

Investigative reporter Gregory Palast of the BBC and London Examiner has broken a number of important stories about the stolen election, including the illegal felon purge by Katherine Harris. You can hear him discuss these issues - and his upcoming documentary - on Meria Heller's radio show on April 10, webcast live.

Florida Republicans are running as fast as they can away from Katherine Harris. Even though the next state election is 20 months away, the Florida Democratic Party is already airing television ads attacking Jeb Bush. With those commercials in mind, GOP political strategists say it's dangerous for Republicans to align themselves too closely with Harris. Democrats, meanwhile, are savoring the possibilities for future television ads, many of which are sure to feature Harris. "There's a whole lot of fodder out there," said Tony Wyche of the Florida Democratic Party. Picture an ad with this quote when Harris innocently asked a 4th grade girl to describe Harris' job: "You get to choose the president of the United States," the brilliant girl replied.

"Yo, Katherine! You tried so hard to appear above the partisan fray! You announced an ambitious overhaul of Florida elections. You did the Today show, and Hannity & Colmes. Conservative groups are feting you on your current rehabilitation tour. You're even being chatted up as a candidate for national office. But, oops, big time. You agreed to headline the June meeting of Free Republic in South Carolina. You're tagged, again, as just a mean-spirited partisan hack." So writes Pam Parker in Online Journal.

Nightline and Ted Koppel presented the absurd notion that it is the responsibility of the Democratic Party to make sure that corrupt and/or incompetent GOP officials do not steal elections, and that if the Democratic Party does not make a Herculean effort to prevent the corruption of the election process by the GOP, the American people have no right to expect fair elections. Scapegoating the Democrats, and scapegoating black voters when the real culprits are GOP election officials who did not do their jobs (or did them illegally), is not merely absurd, it is an outrage.

An investigation by Democrats.com has revealed that hundreds - possibly thousands - of Florida votes for Al Gore and George W. Bush were never counted because marks in the "write-in" section of the ballot caused these ballots to be incorrectly treated as "overvotes." Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified more than 28,000 overvotes from counties that violated Florida law by ignoring such votes. Had these votes been properly counted, Al Gore may well have been declared the winner in Florida.

After helping Shrub steal the Presidency, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) is trying to destroy the evidence of its crime. The RPOF issued the most bizarre recount analysis yet, claiming that Bush has gained 361 votes in post-election manual recounts. They claim their analysis is based on "the official Supreme Court vote standard. The Court called for a clearly punched out chad for punch cards or a clearly filled out oval for Optiscan machines." This is just a Big Lie - the U.S. Supreme Court issued no such ruling. The only legal standard in Florida remains the "intent of the voter." In fact, Katherine Harris accepted and certified the Broward recount which used the "loosest" possible standard of counting dimples.

Just days before the Miami Herald is expected to announce the results of its state-wide recount of ALL undervotes, right wing legal attack group Judicial Watch is trying to sabotage that effort by announcing its own distorted results from a PARTIAL recount. According to Judicial Watch, there are 62,205 undervotes statewide. JW counted 42,724 of them, and concluded that Bush - not Gore - would have gained between 107 and 116 votes, depending on the precise standard used. So far, no problem. But then they make this completely fraudulent claim: "a statewide recount of the Florida undervotes would not have changed the outcome of the presidential election." Democrats.com has kept a running tally of media recounts at gorewonflorida.org since Katherine Harris certified Bush as the winner by only 537 votes. As of March 10, Gore had gained 1,773 votes, giving him a lead of 1,236. Using Judicial Watch's higher number of 116, Gore STILL leads by 1,120 votes. By claiming Bush won, Judicial Watch is committing "recount malpractice." Before we declare this election over, let's wait for the recount of ALL 62,000 undervotes. That's what the Florida Supreme Court ordered in November, and that's what should have decided the winner. Unfortunately for America, a narrow partisan majority of the U.S. Supreme Court conspired with George W. Bush to steal the Presidency - regardless of the will of the voters. If the recounts prove that Gore got more votes, we will work tirelessly to remove George W. Bush, his fellow Republicans, and the Felonious Five from office.

Governor Bush snuck in and out of Maine today, but despite his secrecy and a spring blizzard, between 150 and 200 protesters showed up to greet him. People had come from all over Maine and a few had come from Boston. Their signs represented various causes like nuclear disarmament, the environment, the stolen election, taxes, health care, the sanctions against Iraq, and many others. Many people joked that the new administration is so bad that they had trouble even deciding which terrible, destructive policy to protest!

Berry summarized the problems in Florida by saying, "Some very bad things happened to people who were trying to vote - many of whom were registered and didn't get to vote... a lot of those people were disabled, a lot of them were African Americans, quite a few needed language assistance, some were elderly voters and Jewish voters. A lot of them were people who were trying to vote for the first time and the system seemed not be open to solving their problems or figuring out a way to solve their problems."

The Miami Herald and USA Today claim that their recount of Miami-Dade proves that Bush won Florida. This claim is a lie, because Gore's gain of 682 votes in Palm Beach would have forced Katherine Harris to certify Gore as the winner by 194 votes. But this four-county recount was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered a recount in ALL of Florida's counties. As of today, Al Gore leads in this recount by 1,017 votes, but we are still waiting for the media to complete the recount before we know who actually won Florida.

It took many criminals to steal Florida's election. Katherine Harris spent $4.2 million for a vendor that illegally purged thousands of qualified voters. Seminole and Martin County officials illegally allowed Republican officials to alter absentee ballot applications. But the first indictment may be a Republican official who voted twice. Is this the tip of the iceberg?

Bush's campaign mantra was "I trust the people." But during the Florida recount, that changed to "I trust the machines." Now Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is conducting a top-secret review of America's defense strategy, and his conclusion is "I trust the weapons." No need for people in Bush's future military, which will consist of "pilotless drones that can bomb or spy, small, missile-packed ships, satellites and miniature sensors that detect the enemy will dominate the battle space of the future." Bush had better think twice about this soldier-less strategy - without military ballots, Katherine Harris could not have crowned him as commander-in-thief.

Shrub returned to Florida, the scene of the crime where he stole the Presidency with the help of Jeb and Katherine Harris. Shrub wants Florida voters to forget his crime, but they greeted him with street protests as well as TV and radio ads. As Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) said on January 6, "We will NEVER get over it. We will take it to our graves!"

Al Gore gained 6,607 votes in Palm Beach County, according to an analysis of 19,125 overvotes by the Palm Beach Post. These votes were blamed on the infamous "butterfly ballot." But the increase in Palm Beach's overvotes from 3,073 in 1996 to 19,235 in 2000 could also be the result of tampering - the "Katherine Harris with Tweezers" theory. The Bush campaign fought lawsuits from voters requesting a revote. These problems would have been prevented if Palm Beach had an instant-check system that allowed voters to correct faulty ballots - a system used in many Republican counties in Florida.

Joel Engelhardt and Scott McCabe, staff writers for the Palm Beach Post, win Toto Awards for daring to examine the ballots in Palm Beach - and daring to report the fact that Gore's gains would have given him Florida's 25 electors - if Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, and the US Supreme Court had not committed treason by stopping the recount.

An upcoming issue of Brill's Content reports that CNN White House reporter Jon King sent an e-mail to CNN executives expressing his disgust for Larry King's obsequious performance at the Bush inauguration. "Today I watched in shame and horror as Larry King not only was master of ceremonies at a Bush inaugural event, but also...as he shamelessly rushed on stage to hug the president-elect." Apparently, many at CNN are unhappy with the whorish ways of the network, especially with its right wing take-over by AOL's Steve Case -- a Bush supporter and Ayn Rand fanatic. We have also been disgusted with Larry King's suck-ups to the worst of the right wing -- including Ken Starr, Linda Tripp and Katherine Harris.

Here's a story you won't read elsewhere - from the Daily Racing Form: "Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State who was a central figure during the disputed presidential election, was booed lustily by the 19,150 at Gulfstream on Sunday as she presented the trophy following the Rampart Handicap. 'I've never been booed in my life,' Harris told reporters in the winner's circle." That's because horse fans can tell the difference between the winner and the loser! (Notice the next story about Awol Honey - kinda nice nickname for W, isn't it?)

Jeb Bush is nervous about a voter backlash come the next election. To add to these woes, Jeb's wife Columba is reportedly sick of their "fishbowl" existence. Even before Jeb stole the election, Columba surely didn't appreciate the news about her trying to smuggle $19,000 in goods past US Customs (http://www.naplesnews.com/today/florida/d270483a.htm). No doubt it pained her when her son George P. Bush's arrest record for stalking his girlfriend made the rounds (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/georgep1.shtml). And it certainly spoiled the party when 16 year old Jebby was caught in flagrante delecti with a half-nude underage girl (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jebby1.shtml). And it definitely put a strain on their marriage when rumors circulated about Jeb and Katherine Harris. But the media was downright forgiving of these "indiscretions" compared to how they would have treated Democrats. We would let them go too, but because Jeb helped steal the election for his brother, we will continue to bring up these and other "inconvenient facts" - until the Pretender 'n' Thief gets out of OUR White House!

You may not be into horse racing, but be patient with this article and you will be rewarded about midway down the page.

The manual recount in Miami-Dade added 49 votes to Gore's total and increased his statewide lead over Bush to 1,017. But the news media is spinning the story as proof that Gore LOST Florida. How? First, by ignoring Gore's gain of 682 votes in Palm Beach, which would have compelled Katherine Harris to certify Gore as the winner by 194 votes. Second, by ignoring the Florida Supreme Court's ruling ordering a state-wide recount, which was stopped by an outrageous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that has been condemned by 673 law professors. Democrats.com is tracking the media recounts at www.gorewonflorida.org while we wait for ALL the votes to be counted. Gore's current lead of 1,017 makes him look like the real winner of the Florida election - and the rightful President of the United States. If so, we will not give up until justice is done and Bush is removed from office. (Send this letter to your local editor, and sign it as a member of Democrats.com. For more details, read "Bush Propaganda Machine" below.)

To the U.S. Congress: George W. Bush stole the Presidency of the United States with the help of his brother Jeb Bush, his Florida co-chair Katherine Harris, and five partisan Supreme Court Justices appointed or promoted by Reagan-Bush and Bush-Quayle administrations. Bush thereby assumes the Presidency on the basis of a crime against the American people – and against Democracy itself. We call upon Congress to Impeach President Bush. If they fail, we will elect a new Congress in 2002 that will do so. We will never accept the theft of the Presidency. Sign the Petition!!

Democratic lawmakers on Thursday demanded an investigation into Database Technologies, which was paid $4 million by the state to purge felons from Florida’s voter rolls before last fall’s election. "By most accounts, this contract was an unmitigated disaster, which led to Floridians being denied the right to vote, and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted or misspent," wrote Democratic Leader Tom Rossin of West Palm Beach. He left out one other consequence - Bush stole the Presidency.

Katherine Harris is pushing for $200 million to move to electronic voting systems in Florida. Will Harris' proposed touchscreen systems provide a new way for the Bushies and the Republicans to electronically rig elections? Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney, who distinguished himself with rabble rousing during the Florida election theft, opposes an upgrade because he blames all of the election problems on the voters. Feeney sure does like to blame everyone except his fellow Republicans who stole the election.

The fundamental conflict in this country is over which competing set of values will prevail in defining and setting the public agenda. Without a 21st Century Democratic Party as their champion, the values that make this the greatest democracy on earth will be severely handicapped.

Testifying before the US Commission on Civil Rights, Database Technologies executive George Bruder said Katherine Harris' office didn't care about the accuracy of the list of felons they compiled for removal from the voter rolls. "What we did was as per specifications of the division of elections," Bruder said. "They wanted false positives on search parameters to cast as broad a net as possible." While many counties refused to use this inaccurate list, the elections supervisor in Miami-Dade thought it was "mandatory" to use the list. As a result, an unknown number of valid voters - disproportionately black - were unable to vote.

Investigative journalist Gregory Palast's report on the Bush/Harris election scam can be downloaded until February 22. The 13 minute film covers Palast's expose of Database Technologies, the firm hired by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush that purged thousands of Florida voters - mostly African-American - from the voter registry. A highlight is Harris' Director of Elections, Clay Roberts, bolting from the cameras exclaiming, "If y'all want to hang this on me that's fine!" The program announcement promises, "For the first time: 'secret and confidential' details of the agreement between the State and the computer firm ... which show exactly how Al Gore was cheated out of 23,000 votes."

Database Technologies Inc. will come under scrutiny from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Katherine Harris paid the company $4 million to compile a list of felons, but the list was inaccurate, and contained many common names that resulted in the removal of fully qualified voters. The panel is rushing to publish preliminary findings and recommendations by the end of March to impact the legislative session, which starts in less than three weeks.

Right on cue, Linda Tripp emerges from the shadows to give an interview to Larry King on CNN. Tripp claims she was told by White House officials to not record gifts received by the Clintons. The timing couldn't be more suspicious for Tripp to bear "witness" to the latest trumped-up scandal -- "Giftgate". Somehow this woman pops up in the middle of every Clinton "scandal"! For starters, Tripp was the last person to see Vince Foster alive (Scaife and the wingnuts' favorite conspiracy theory). Tripp was also a key "witness" to other pseudo-scandals such as Travelgate, Filegate and Willeygate, not to mention Monicagate. CNN even published this whopper: "After the disclosure of the tapes, she was transferred to the Pentagon", which is absurd since Tripp met Lewinsky while they both worked at the Pentagon. By the way, Linda -- who was that "benefactor" that paid for your plastic surgeries? Does he have the initials R.M.S.? This weekend CNN and King continued their homage to right-wing treachery with Larry's interview of Katherine Harris.

"I believe our critics are wrong. Our Party is united. Our Party is strong. In the last election, we beat Republican incumbents. We picked up seats in the House. We picked up seats in the Senate. We won State Houses. And we won the popular vote, rolling up 50 million votes nationally. And you know this: if Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Jim Baker and the Supreme Court hadn't tampered with the results, Al Gore would be President, George Bush would be back in Austin, and John Ashcroft would be home reading Southern Partisan magazine... We will transform the anger about Florida into energy about politics. We will prove there is victory after denial, democracy after Florida, Daschle after Lott, Gephardt after Hastert, and justice after the Supreme Court. We will give the American people a Congress they can be proud of, and we will show George Bush the door in two thousand and four." So says the new DNC Chair, Terry McAuliffe.

The Rent-a-Nazi's celebrated their Theft of the Presidency in Washington during the Inaugural weekend. "An Inaugural Reception Honoring the Men and Women Who Made it Happen," was sponsored by the power law firm of Patton Boggs, home to Bush lawyer Ben Ginsberg and Cokie Roberts' brother Hale Boggs Jr. Ginsberg's co-host was Joe Allbaugh, Bush's campaign manager and nominee for FEMA who is at the center of the Funeralgate scandal, who got "all choked up" when thanking the rioters. Featured guests included Ted and Barbara Olson and - you guessed it - Katherine Harris herself. Veterans of the "19th Floor Riot" - their term, not ours - were given T-shirts and lucite trophies - and top jobs in the Justice Department, no doubt.

Al Gore gained 682 votes in Palm Beach County, following a manual recount of 4,513 disputed undervotes by the Palm Beach Post that counted dimpled ballots. This ONE batch would have been enough to overcome the 537 vote lead that was handed to Bush by his state co-chair, Katherine Harris. Combined with other recounts (see GoreWonFlorida.org),this brought Gore's Florida lead to 1,067. The Palm Beach Post is still reviewing another 4,600 undervotes and 19,235 overvotes.

In his inaugural speech, Bush cited America's "faith in freedom and democracy." He also made a solemn pledge: "I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity." But Bush made no mention at all of the crimes against democracy and the massive INjustice that made him President - the election stolen in Florida by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Is Bush planning to pretend throughout his Presidency that he won a just and democratic election?

An investigation by Gregory Palast in The Nation found that aides to Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris defied explicit court rulings and prevented thousands of Floridians - mostly black - from voting. This was done by illegally purging and denying registration to thousands of Florida residents who committed crimes in other states but had their voting rights restored after paying their debts to society. Bush and Harris refused to answer the reporter's calls; they must be brought to justice for criminally interfering with the voting rights of thousands of Floridians.

The NAACP, along with The Advancement Project, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and People for the American Way Foundation filed a historic lawsuit in Florida to eliminate discriminatory and unequal voting policies and practices from Florida's electoral system. The suit alleges that the disparate and unfair voting practices across the state resulted in the invalidation of a disproportionate number of ballots cast by black voters for President, the wrongful purge of black voters from official voter lists, a failure to properly process registrations of black voters, and the establishment of unjustifiable barriers to black voters. This lawsuit seeks fundamental change to the voting practices in Florida to make them fair and equal for all Floridians.

During his brief testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Jeb Bush "denied that he had any special contact with Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, one of six co-chairs of his brother's Florida campaign, or other elections officials before or during Election Day," according to the Washington Post. Interestingly, Jeb's remarks were made under oath...

The right wing Internet rag, NewsMax, says that the tabloids are about to break the story of the much rumored Jeb Bush-Katherine Harris affair. They claim the tabloids have witnesses who have passed polygraph tests. Remember, this is coming from a right wing house organ.

Oh, the shredding machines must be working overtime in Tallahassee tonight. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has subpoenaed Jeb Bush to explain why so many minorities lost their right to vote in Florida. He is also being asked to bring all evidence of communication with Katherine Harris during the election to the hearing, along with other communication documentation. Of course, Jeb's Daddy headed the CIA, so expect that there will be a lot of paperwork that gets burned up in a mysterious fire. Then again,who knows, maybe there will be some justice after all.

Not satisfied that 31% of black men in Florida are not allowed to vote because of a ban on felons, Secretary of State Katherine Harris employed a firm with strong Republican Party ties to remove as many as 173,000 Floridians from the voter rolls without any due process, notification, or legal recourse.

We knew it was coming, didn't you? Some people said that Bush would never appoint Katherine Harris to a position in his administration. These people argued that it would be too embarrassing for Bush. But, who are you kidding? Bush is a rich kid brat. He thinks he deserved the presidency, and his credo is to award the loyal for their combat duty. Call it despicable, call it lacking in any semblance of integrity, call it Bush league.

Watch Out for Guns and Your Civil Liberties! The NRA Gets Its Payoff. On Friday, GWB announced John Ashcroft as the next Attorney General (subject to Senate confirmation). He is a right wing dream boat when it comes to their core issues. He is the man who will control the "administration of justice" in the United States. But when you look at his support from almost every right wing advocacy group, including the pro-life and NRA contingents, Ashcroft is likely to become the Justice Department's Katherine Harris, a symbol of grave injustice. But in this case, it's the very integrity of our civil liberties and tradition of law and justice that is at stake. Ashcroft, a former Missouri Senator, most recently became infamous for losing his Senate re-election to a dead man. Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, who was running against Ashcroft, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the November election. But his name remained on the ballot -- and a dead man (Carnahan) beat a live one (Ashcroft). (Carnahan's wife, Jean, was appointed by Missouri's Democratic Governor to be seated in her husband's place.) Now the loser is set to become our new attorney general.

Al Gore picked up 130 votes today in the first manual recount by a media organization. The Orlando Sentinel reviewed 3,114 "overvotes" on optical scan-type ballots, and found 376 uncounted votes for Gore and 246 uncounted votes for Bush, for a net gain of 130 for Gore. The Sentinel used the same standard as was used for the official count in Orange and Seminole counties. This gain of 130 would have overcome Bush's lead of 113-114 votes when the U.S. Supreme Court slammed the door shut on the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. Predictably, the Bush campaign attacked the effort, accusing the Sentinel of "trying to stir things up" - yeah, like the truth.

Make that $682,000 and climbing. That's how much the taxpayers have paid thus far to pay for Katherine Harris's legal costs. That's a lot of taxpayer dollars to help Ms. Harris become the next ambassador to Luxembourg. By the way, on election eve, guess where she called from her cellphone. Austin, of course.

George W. Bush stole the Presidency of the United States with the help of his brother Jeb Bush, his Florida co-chair Katherine Harris, and five partisan Supreme Court Justices appointed or promoted by Reagan-Bush and Bush-Quayle administrations. Bush thereby assumes the Presidency on the basis of a crime against the American people – and against Democracy itself. We call upon the next Congress to Impeach President Bush. If they fail, we will elect a new Congress in 2002 that will do so. We will never accept the theft of the Presidency.

In the end, I hope the first election of the 21st century serves as a reminder: no matter how advanced our technology gets, neither our technology – nor we – will ever be perfect. And for Democracy to survive for another 224 years, we must use all of our human capacities to reason, to think – and most importantly – to listen.

You don't need to be a Constitutional scholar to see through the Republican lies. Here are nine simple questions from an American citizen and a voter. Can any Republican answer these questions?

The Florida Supreme Court has overturned the lower court ruling and directed that a recount begin immediately. More than 9,000 votes in Miami Dade will be recounted, as Vice President Gore had asked. And recounts are authorized in all Florida counties that have not yet examined ballots in which a machine was unable to detect a vote for president. The court also put back into Gore's tally the vote totals from Miami and Palm Beach that Secretary of State Katherine Harris refused to include in her certification, closing the Bush margin to a razor sharp 154 votes. So this one ain't over yet, folks.

Of course, Ms. Harris made a big booboo that resulted in hundreds, maybe even thousands of black voters being stricken from the election roles. A Texas firm, you guessed it, was hired by Ms. Harris to remove felons from the voting lists, but they removed tons of people with only misdemeanors, and they never fully rectified the errors. Maybe it's just a coincidence that a lot of Gore minority voters didn't get to caste their ballots. Somehow, we doubt it was due to unplanned mistakes. This one stinks to high heaven.

"Yet for well over a week, I have been hearing persistent reports, from sources as far-flung as KGO Radio and The New York Observer, that CNN and Newsweek and The New York Times all have the goods, at least in part, pertaining to an alleged sexual relationship between Florida Governor Jeb Bush and HIS Secretary of State, Katherine Harris -- yet very little has actually made it into print on this matter."

On Monday, four black voters from Florida filed a Federal lawsuit against George Bush and Katherine Harris. The suit charges "systematic exclusion of minority voters" and the use of "illegal ballots." It asks the court to nullify Harris' certification of the election results, order a recount or possibly a new election. Among the complaints listed in the suit is "the systematic use of intimidation and illegal force by the local and state police forces to physically prevent voters of color from reaching their poll sites."

"The vote totals reported in the election canvassing commission's certification of Nov. 26, 2000, are wrong. They include illegal votes and do not include legal votes that were improperly rejected. The number of such votes is more than sufficient to place in doubt, indeed to change, the result of the election." So begins the historic Gore campaign's challenge to Katherine Harris's abominable certification.

Minutes after Jeb Bush's poodle, Katherine Harris, put the fix in for Dubya, Joe Lieberman denounced the call. ``We have an opportunity here, and we have a responsibility to ensure that this election lifts up our democracy and respects every voter and every vote -- no matter what the outcome,'' Lieberman said. ``And that is precisely what Vice President Gore and I will seek to do in the days ahead,'' he said. Go Joe!

Emulating Napoleon, George W. Bush arrogantly crowned himself as Emperor following his "certification" by his Florida campaign co-chair, Katherine Harris. Rich Wright, a Democrats.com reader, suggested making paper crowns - let your children help, it's fun for the whole family! Then mail the folded crowns to Emperor George W. Bush, P.O. Box 12428, Austin, TX 78711-2428 - and send a letter to your local newspaper explaining your protest action. Enjoy!

On Monday, Democrats will challenge Katherine Harris' certification. Bush's razor-thin margin of 537 does not include over 10,000 uncounted ballots in Miami-Dade and several thousand more in Palm Beach. Vice President-elect Joe Lieberman denounced Harris' action: "What is at issue here is nothing less than every America's simple, sacred right to vote. How can we teach our children that every vote counts if we are not willing to make a good faith effort to count every vote?" Democrats will file challenges in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Nassau counties. And keep an eye on Seminole County, where 5,000 Bush votes may be tossed out in a trial that begins tomorrow.

Katherine Harris had her marching orders from the Bush campaign prior to the Florida Supreme Court order - to slow the hand recount process down by any means, which she did. Now, she might have succeeded in disenfranchising hundreds, if not thousands of voters. She has been assisted by boorish and hostile GOP vote counters who have slowed up the counting process at every step of the way.

In 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote by 264,000 votes. But Republican Rutherford B. Hayes cut deals with three southern states where the results were in dispute, including Florida. He promised to remove Federal troops and thereby end Reconstruction in return for the southern Electoral College votes. A Republican-rigged Electoral College commission completed the theft of the Presidency for Hayes, who was subsequently called "Rutherfraud." There are many parallels to the events unfolding before our eyes.

Late Tuesday night, the Florida Supreme Court declared that "the right of the people to cast their vote is the paramount concern overriding all others." They ordered Katherine Harris to accept all recounts by Monday 9am at the latest. They rejected Bush's insistence on "trusting the machines" by declaring "our society has not yet gone so far as to place blind faith in machines. In almost all endeavors, including elections, humans routinely correct the errors of machines." The ruling is a slam-dunk victory for Justice.

The brazeness of the Bush camp's hypocrisy and conflicts of interest is so glaring that is hard for a Democrat to comprehend. That's right, the Bush campaign is discussing a transition team role with Harris even as she is denying voters the recount that they deserve. Why isn't the Gore campaign bringing this up? It's their responsibility to point out the outrageous GOP hypocrisy.

In papers filed before the Florida Supreme Court, Al Gore's attorneys called the behavior and requirements of Sec. of State Katherine Harris "Kafkaesque."We'll just call them Bushesque.

It's simply astonishing to hear that some Republicans in Congress want to hold hearings on how, allegedly, the TV Networks helped Gore remain competitive in Florida. BuzzFlash thinks that the bellyaching by Congressman Tauzin, hailing from the Louisiana Bayou, is meant as a proactive effort to counter the growing public opinion that the media, television in particular, acted as a PR conduit for the Bush campaign --and they still are. BuzzFlash watched the McLaughlin Group briefly on Saturday night and heard four white adult males honestly assert that Katherine Harris has been acting in a fair and just manner. Only Eleanor Clift, of Newsweek, brought some perspective into the discussion. Poor Eleanor was so mortified by what she was hearing that she was forced to adopt the tactics of the pro-Bush journalists, which is to cut everyone off and hog as much airtime as possible.

Bush's Inaugural Song ... Presuming all Democrats are Criminals ... Republicans sabotaging our petitions ... and much more!

George W. Bush lost last Tuesday's presidential election. The networks knew it, the voters knew it, the Republican Party knew it, and George W. Bush knew it. But they couldn't accept it. Despite all the character attacks, the negative ads, the outrageous spending of a record $138 million, Bush lost. So with nothing more to lose, they resorted to dirty tricks.

In a latebreaking Friday afternoon ruling, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ordered Florida Secretary of State Katherine "Jeb Bush Owns Me" Harris to cease from certifying a winner in the Presidential election until further order of the court. That must have surely cast a pall over the celebrating in Austin after an early morning circuit court ruling that had permitted Ms. "I want desperately to be an ambassador to France in a Bush administration" Harris to proceed in rejecting the hand recounted votes.

Here's an excerpt:. "Ms. Harris, who served as co-chairwoman of the Bush campaign in Florida this year, announced last evening that she would accept no further manual vote counts. That is an abuse of her public duty and an irresponsible act at this sensitive moment in the nation's political life. She is doing grievous damage to Mr. Bush's reputation, and potentially to his presidency."

Would anything surprise us at this point? The Florida Supreme Court should send Katherine Harris into exile. But she'd still have a job, we're sure. FOX News would hire her as an expert unbiased commentator, just to please the Bush campaign.

The Florida Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke to Katherine Harris and the Republican Party by giving the green light to manual vote counting in Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade Counties. During the day, heroic civil servants in Broward defied an imperious edict from Harris and continued counting votes, finding 21 additional votes for Gore. It looks like the Florida Supreme Court will uphold the fundamental democratic principle that every vote must count.

Just a little nudge here and there, that's all it takes for Florida's Secretary of State needs to do the work of the Bush campaign. However, Jeb Bush had the usual shameless Bush audacity to assert to claim that Harris was just upholding the law of the state of Florida. The Bushes look so sincere and earnest when they're lying through their teeth.

Late Wednesday night, Katherine Harris told the voters of Palm Beach, Broward, Miami - and America – that she alone rules America. She said she would certify Bush the winner on Saturday, the voters be damned. The Gore campaign will challenge Harris in court. But for the citizens of America, the next step is clear: we must do everything in our power to stop the theft of the Presidency. We must call every talk show, write every newspaper, and march in the streets until justice is done. Our slogans: Every vote counts - count every vote! The people decide – not Katherine Harris! No justice - no peace! Start by signing our petition to Stop the Theft of the Presidency by George W. Bush.

On Wednesday, the Florida Supreme Court summarily rejected Secretary of State Katherine Harris's efforts to block manual recounts. Harris has proved that she is more than willing to disenfranchise thousands of Florida voters in order to declare George W. Bush the winner. Harris is a partisan Republican who co-chaired the Bush campaign, and has also faced extensive ethical problems, according to the New York Times. Harris should take politics out of the vote certification process by recusing herself immediately. In one day, our petition gathered nearly 3,000 signatures. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle also urged Harris to recuse herself. Sign our petition today!

In a stinging rebuke to GWB surrogate, Katherine Harris, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously rejected her request to stop the recounts in at least three Florida counties. The decision, rendered on Wednesday afternoon, was reached without even a full hearing. While other court activity is still proceeding, this ruling indicates that at least the Supreme Court of the Sunshine State is going to follow the rule of law -- and not the rule of the Bush.

Katherine Harris not only co-chaired the Bush campaign, she even led a delegation of Sunshine State Dubya fans to campaign for him in New Hampshire. What's more is she has squandered taxpayer money on lavish travel and misused campaign funds. Appearing on CNN, Alan Dershowitz didn't mince words. "She's a crook," he said.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a George and Jeb Bush surrogate, announced that Dubya has a 300 vote lead after she "officially certified the returns." Of course, the overseas absentee ballots won't be counted until Saturday, so there's only one reason she rushed the count: to make sure that Gore doesn't get the votes that are due him.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was George W. Bush's campaign co-chair in Florida, proved her continuing partisanship today by issuing a ruling massively favorable to the Bush campaign. Harris announced that she would not wait for county officials in Palm Beach and elsewhere to complete their manual recounts, even though manual recounts are specified by law. Harris says she won't accept vote counts after 5 pm on Tuesday. Harris should recuse herself immediately from these hotly contested proceedings. In the meantime, Gore's lawyers are going into court to let the manual recounts be completed.

The consternation, if not gloom, that has descended on Democrats in the aftermath of the election is premature. A hard look at the numbers points to a strong chance for Vice President Al Gore to carry Florida and win the Presidency. Importantly, it appears Gore can win purely on the basis of vote counts, without resort to litigation.