Ted Stevens, Alaskan King Crab

The IRS and the FBI raided his home and he's caught up in a ever-expanding corruption scandal in Alaskan politics. So how has Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) handled the heat? He snapped at the press. It's their fault, don't you see?!

I can understand liberals' complaints about unfair and imbalanced press, because goodness knows, liberal media bias doesn't exist. But Stevens' whining about unwarranted and overdone media coverage of him and his son's slimy activities? Hell, the King Crab from Alaska deserves all the scrutiny he's gettin' and more. Stevens clacked his claws during his Anchorage Daily News interview:

[Snips below the jump]

...Stevens grew testy when a reporter suggested that the level of interest in the state's senior senator was high because so many Alaska politicians and public figures had been caught in the wider corruption probe. Also, as the longest-serving GOP senator in history, and the former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Stevens has a higher profile than the average Washington politician.

In the interview, Stevens made vague threats to the people who have suggested that he and his son, former state Senate President Ben Stevens, might be guilty of some sort of wrongdoing. The younger Stevens hasn't been charged with a crime, but his name has come up repeatedly in court proceedings. Plea documents in Allen's own case say that payments of $243,250 the Veco CEO made to Ben Stevens were bribes in exchange for "giving advice, lobbying colleagues, and taking official acts in matters before the Legislature" when the younger Stevens was a state lawmaker.

"Your papers print (the names of) those people who have been convicted and my son's name and mine at the same time. As far as the public is concerned, it's all the same ball of wax," Stevens said. "I'm not going to comment on that ball of wax."

"But we've been included in a way that I hope people understand the laws that are doing it," he said. "Because when it's all over, some people are going to have to account for what they've said and what they've charged us with."

It was unclear whom Stevens was threatening. When asked if he meant libel or perjury, Stevens said: "No. I'm just saying there are ways to account for this in the future."

When asked if he meant political retribution, he remained vague:

"I think the people out there ought to worry about that the way I worry about the investigation. There are myriad things you can do. Just a myriad of things."

Jeso Pete! Not only is King Crab a kook, but he's creepy, too. One wonders: Is Stevens thinking about urging the politicized DOJ to trash his enemies? Attack Democrats who have been consulting with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich to run against crabby ol' Ted? Will he appeal to loyal Bushies to wiretap ADN reporters? The latter isn't beyond wild speculation. Come to think of it... sadly, none of these offhand questions seem far-fetched given the ascendancy of Republican corruption and disregard for the rule of law.

WaPo also reported that Ted is "a skeptic about human causes of climate change." Arctic drilling and oil executive bribes, I'm sure, haven't influenced Stevens' position.

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Bloomberg Drops Republican Affiliation

CNN is reporting that

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg changed his party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated Tuesday, a move that will surely increase speculation he is considering an independent White House bid.

Yep, it's beginning to sound like Michael Bloomberg is the Ross Perot of 2008.

Hmmm, who benefited from Ross Perot's run? That's right, Bill Clinton. Who might benefit from a run by Bloomberg? Why, Hilliary Clinton, of course. Coincidence?

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Rudy's commitment to tax cuts sounds familiar

Rudy Giuliani rolled out his "Twelve Commitments" on Tuesday. One promise will no doubt thrill the GOP base: "I will cut taxes and reform the tax code." It's tax cuts, baby! Tax cuts! How Rudy plans to reform the tax code, he didn't explain. However, Rudy's "commitment" to tax cuts behooves a look at his campaign rhetoric and his mayoral performance. Joe Conason, a long-time Salon columnist, journalist, and author, examined his record and reported Rudy's Scary Tax Tales:

...the war in Iraq is increasingly unpopular, so lately Mr. Giuliani is talking more about supply-side economics—and about Hillary Rodham Clinton, who irritates Republicans almost as much as taxes. During a campaign visit to California’s Silicon Valley on May 30, he resorted to familiar right-wing rhetoric in attacking his old rival.

What prompted Mr. Giuliani to pounce was Senator Clinton’s forthright declaration that she would, if elected, roll back some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the richest Americans. “This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase,” he said at a fund-raiser that included technology executives and lobbyists. “She wants to go back to the 1990’s …. It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology.”

OK, America. Show of hands of who would like to return to the prosperity garnered under the Clinton economy? Yeah, me too. As Conason pointed out:

Once again, Mr. Giuliani’s memory seems to be failing him, as it did when he claimed that Ronald Reagan had stared down the Iranian mullahs (rather than secretly selling them missiles and giving them cakes). His Mayoralty, which lasted from 1994 until 2001, closely coincided with the strongest decade of economic growth in American history. He should remember those fat times, because the city advanced smartly along with the rest of the nation.

In fact, if he tries hard enough, he might even recall that those years of peace and prosperity began with a bitter debate over taxes, when President Clinton was seeking to enact his first federal budget. Upon entering the Oval Office, Mr. Clinton found to his dismayed surprise that his “fiscally conservative” predecessor had left a $290 billion deficit. He responded by imposing substantial tax increases on the top 1 percent of taxpayers and omitting the “middle-class tax cut” he had promised in his campaign.

Predictably, the Republican right threw a screaming tantrum, falsely describing the tax increase as the “largest in history” (that honor actually belonged to Reagan) and warning that it would result in a severe recession or worse. Conservative politicians and pundits unanimously predicted that higher taxes would mean fewer jobs and larger deficits.

They were resoundingly wrong, of course. Within a few years after the ’93 tax hike, we were enjoying full employment, shrinking poverty, rising household incomes at all levels, greater home ownership—and the prospect of a gigantic federal surplus.

Now it is true that the biggest opportunities for Mr. Giuliani to enrich himself (and start worrying about the top tax rate) arrived in the years after he left office. As a security consultant, book author, investment rainmaker and corporate lawyer, he has reportedly earned many millions of dollars. He commands more than $50,000 for every inspiring speech he delivers about the leadership he displayed on 9/11—a fact that annoys firefighters and other heroes whose opinion of him has soured.

But for the rest of America, the 90’s were better than the years since the millennium. Under George W. Bush, another economic Reaganite who cut taxes for the wealthy, wages have stagnated along with family incomes, while the income gap has grown—all thanks to the kind of policies advocated by Mr. Giuliani. He promoted those trends early on as Mayor, when privatization began to drive down wages among the city’s lowest-paid workers, causing family incomes to drop and poverty to rise.

Out in Silicon Valley, he bragged about his economic record in office. “The way I paid for preparing the New York City budget was by lowering taxes. I was collecting billions of dollars more from the lower taxes than from the higher taxes,” he claimed. “You can make money by lowering taxes.”

Indeed, under Repub governance, the richest Americans certainly have made more money... but people below the top 1%? Not so much. The idea that tax cuts generate more revenue hails from old Republican propaganda that's a tax-cut con. Yet those two words, tax cuts, warm the cockles of the hearts of the rubes who fall for the GOP talking point. Hey, it's magic. Slashing taxes increases revenue, right? Not exactly according to Paul Krugman. Early on, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities evaluated Bush's tax cuts: "The three rounds of tax-cut legislation (in 2001, 2002, and 2003) account for a substantial share of the nation’s current deficit." And, our current situation in Washington involves "budget chicanery" although the Bush Administration has managed to hide it.

Joe also uncovered the net result of Rudy's tax cuts and the news should alert voters interested in a return to fiscal sanity:

He forgot to mention what happened later.... When he departed City Hall, he left on his desk a gaping deficit of nearly $4 billion—and Mayor Michael Bloomberg had no choice but to raise taxes.

I don't see how much more debt the federal guvmit can stand after being soaked by the biggest gusher of red ink ever drilled by Bush. But I'm sure we will hear more from Rudy on how we "can make more money by lowering taxes."

Matt Miller of Fortune Magazine delivered a stinging assessment on Monday of Repub tax-cut policy overall:

New Census data show that the top 1 percent of U.S. earners now take home a greater share of national income than at any time since the height of the go-go 1920s. The top 300,000 earners together receive almost as much income as the bottom 150 million.

Democrats inhale these facts and breathe out fire.

Republicans say, "Hey, this is no time to be complacent. With a little effort we can push this closer to Louis XVI levels of inequality!"

At least that's what GOP presidential wannabes are sounding like as they genuflect before the altar of tax reduction, despite that creed's growing fiscal, moral, and mathematical indefensibility.

Mitt Romney wants more marginal and corporate rate cuts. Rudy Giuliani touts the endorsement of Steve "Flat Tax" Forbes. Even John McCain, the "straight talker" who opposed Bush's original tax cuts, now insists on their extension.

Before every red-blooded tax loather spits on this page in disgust, consider the context. Over the past six years we've borrowed nearly $2 trillion to cut taxes for the wealthiest during a time of war, meaning we've slipped the bill for our war and our tax cuts to our kids.

How do the candidates - who also claim to be "fiscally conservative" (not to mention devotees of "family values") - square all this?

Their stock answer is that we can cut taxes further if only we "get tough on spending." Sounds marvelous, but when Republicans controlled every corner of Washington, they balked at trimming a teensy few million from the next trillion in planned Medicaid expenses.

Bottom line: The outer limits of Republican spending-cut zeal won't get us anywhere close to balancing the books.

And that's before you toss in our $39 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities.

I once asked budget gurus at two conservative think tanks what federal spending and taxes should be as a percentage of GDP a decade from now (it's 20 percent today). They casually replied 12 percent or 13 percent - meaning they think we'll slice government by more than a third as 77 million baby-boomers hit their rocking chairs.

This evidences either (a) deep disingenuousness or (b) deeper delusions.

Neither speaks well for the state of conservative thinking. Truth is, the only way GOP math adds up is if Giuliani, Romney, and company adopt the incentives for voluntary "transitions" (read suicides) for 65-year-olds featured in Chris Buckley's new comic novel, "Boomsday."

The most disappointing feature of the GOP case on taxes is a sin of omission. Tax-cut cheerleaders, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, focus exclusively on the income tax. And it's true, the top 5 percent of earners do pay about 58 percent of federal income taxes.

But the income tax is only 47 percent of federal revenue today - something Republicans never want to discuss.

When you throw other federal taxes into the mix (especially the regressive payroll tax disproportionately borne by average earners), you find that "all in," the top-earning 5 percent make about 30 percent of the income and pay about 40 percent of overall federal taxes. In other words, we have a modestly progressive system.

As conventional political wisdom goes and modern history has shown, Repubs favor the rich and Dems champion middle-class and poor Americans. We don't yet know the specs on who Rudy's tax cuts will benefit or how he will address the bloated U.S. deficit and income inequality in America. My bullshit meter went off when I read how the conservative anti-tax Club For Growth "praised Giuliani's tax cutting and free-market approach." Their white paper states that Rudy inherited a $2.4 billion budget deficit but conveniently doesn't mention the $4 billion debt he left for Mayor Bloomberg. And that's too similar to the scary situation Bush has created, the budget crisis the next president will face.

Hopefully, voters have gotten wise to the GOP tax-cut scam but let's make sure to tell them.

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A Message From Arkansas Republican Chairman Dennis Milligan

Every once in a while you read something that is simultaneously so painfully honest, totally clueless and utterly vile you just can't believe it. Recently the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's Michael Wickline asked Dennis Milligan, Arkansas Republican Party Chairman, his position on President Bush and the Iraq war.

I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around....

Dennis, most of the rest of us are praying that we don't have any more attacks on the United States, and if we do, that we go after the actual "evildoers" instead of some country that didn't have anything to do with the attack.

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I Am Afraid Monica's Freudian Slip Is Showing or How Rachel Paulose Can't Catch A Break.

God I love this job. I have been following the really brain dead public relations campaign to rehabilitate the fading career of Rachel Poulose. Rachel is a young Republican with a wonderful resume. She seems to have some problem with the "little people." Shortly after she took the job of US Attorney in Minneapolis, four of her top aides got so fed up with her imperious ways they took demotions rather than spend time working with her directly. Instead of learning the obvious life lessons from that early debacle, she apparently has decided to fight back. As near as I can tell she has surrounded herself with a truly clueless PR posse that has done an absolutely crappy job. For example, last monday she tried to reintroduce herself just days before Monica Goodling was going to testify. That reintroduction didn't go very well. Neither did Katherine Kersten's followup whine.

Luckily for Rachel, Monica didn't have a lot to say about her, and it was mostly good. Monica did make some unfortunate comments about Rachel's predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger. Heffelfinger was the very model of a loyal Republican US Attorney right up to last week. All through the US Attorney scandal, even after he was found to be on the list of attorneys to be fired, he insisted that his resignation was entirely voluntary.

As has been typical of the Gonzales Justice Department, Monica found a way to really anger the former US Attorney. She criticized his professional work. As will be revealed below, the Clucking Stool thinks she might have suffered what we used to call a Freudian slip.

In response to a question from Representative Keith Ellison, Monica said, "There were some concerns that he (Heffelfinger) spent an extraordinary amount of time as the leader of the Native American subcommittee of the AGAC (Attorney General's Advisory Committee)."

Heffelfinger replied by telling KARE11 News he was "extraordinarily outraged" to hear his work criticized. Heffelfinger was proud of his work with Native Americans. He told the AP, again quoting KARE11,

"I did spent a lot of time on it," Heffelfinger said of the American Indian issue. "That's what I was instructed to do" by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Given the higher rates of violence suffered by American Indians, Heffelfinger said, the time was warranted, but it didn't take away from other priorities.

"I had to work hard, but I was comfortable with the mix of my local responsibilities and my Native American responsibilities," said Heffelfinger, who oversaw his office's investigation into the 2005 shooting that claimed 10 lives on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in far northern Minnesota.

Throughout the US Attorney scandal there is a common theme, a theme most of the loyal Bushies like Sampson, Goodling and their boss have yet to figure out--you just don't tell a proud professional that the work he is proudest of is crap, not unless you really want to have your hat handed to you.

This morning the LA Times carried a story by Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writer, and former Minnesota native, tying Heffelfinger's good work on behalf of Native Americans to another overarching theme of the Gonzales justice department--the ongoing Republican campaign to suppress the minority vote. Yep, Heffelfinger refused to take part in a campaign to suppress the Native American vote, a campaign that involves two of our old favorites, Brad Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky.

As you will recall Von Spakovsky and Schlozman are voting suppression specialists linked to Republican voter suppression campaigns in Missouri and Georgia. Since most poor people of color are Democrats, from the point of view of Brad and Hans suppressing the vote of poor people of color is a good thing.

The basic Republican voter suppression plan, as advanced in Missouri and Georgia, is for local Republicans to plant the frightening image in the minds of the local media and the general public of thousands of poor black people showing up at the polls to vote Democratic dozens of times.

For a lot of technical reasons the kind of "voter fraud" that concerns Republicans is virtually non-existent. That doesn't stop the patented Republican voter suppression campaign. The Republican solution to the terrible, but non-existant, problem of "voter fraud" is to require each voter to present a special and expensive voter ID card at the polling place on election day. Republican legislatures eagerly enact such laws. Members of the local media write puff pieces singing the praises of Republicans who have solved a truly frightening problem.

Since poor people can't afford to pay a lot for their voter or state ID, or they might not realize they need one until the last minute, voter suppression of the poor Democratic minority is almost a sure thing.

Ordinarily, the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is all over such state statutes. After all poll taxes and the like are illegal under Federal law, and have been since Jim Crow days. Enter Schlozman and Von Spakovsky. Their job was to overrule or otherwise defang the career professionals in the civil rights division. Theirs was the most successful part of the Republican voter suppression campaign in the last couple of elections. In both, the Civil Rights Division, now largely manned by loyal Bushies, was essentially neutered. Fortunately, opponents didn't need DoJ help to convince the courts that the Missouri and Georgia laws were illegal.

There are 32,000 Native Americans living in the Saint Paul area alone. The ID they use in their daily lives is the ID card issued by their tribe. It is widely thought that a lot of those Native Americans vote for Democrats.

According to LA Times:

Citing requirements in a new state election law, Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver's licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes' photo IDs.

Heffelfinger had one of his staff e-mail the Civil Rights Division. It was made clear that Heffelfinger was very concerned about Kiffmeyer's directive and believed something needed to be done. The Times article continues

About three months after Heffelfinger's office raised the issue of tribal ID cards and nonreservation Indians in an October 2004 memo, his name appeared on a list of U.S. attorneys singled out for possible firing.

"I have come to the conclusion that his expressed concern for Indian voting rights is at least part of the reason that Tom Heffelfinger was placed on the list to be fired," said Joseph D. Rich, former head of the voting section of the Justice Department's civil rights division. Rich, who retired in 2005 after 37 years as a career department lawyer — 24 of them in Republican administrations — was closely involved in the Minnesota ID issue

Rich is the lawyer who received the e-mails from a member of Heffelfinger's staff. Rich started working the case. According to Rich Schlozman and Von Spakovsky promptly placed impossible conditions on the conduct of the investigation effectively squelching it.

According to the Star Tribune, one of Rachel Paulose's first acts after appointment was "to remove Lewis, who had written the 2004 e-mails to Washington expressing concern about American Indian voting rights." I wonder if that's when her management problems began?

UPDATE: I just remembered Hans Von Spakosky has a confirmation hearing scheduled for June 13. With this story breaking right now, maybe he is the guy who can't catch a break?

There's more: "I Am Afraid Monica's Freudian Slip Is Showing or How Rachel Paulose Can't Catch A Break." >>

Ron Paul Viral Abu Ghraib Ad

I know this is a "lefty blog" and all that implies, and I don't agree with Ron Paul on much, but it is refreshing to find a Republican candidate who doesn't endorse torture (er, enhanced interrogation techniques.)

I am a member of a large lawyer Internet group. So far Paul has received more positive endorsements from members of that pretty independent bunch than any of the announced Republican (or Democratic) candidates.

This is a viral ad that seems to be making the rounds. For Republicans, and I can only assume the people who made it are Republicans, to tie President Bush and the Bush Administration directly to Abu Ghraib is shocking. It is R rated, and it isn't pretty, so beware. Again the ad is viral, and nobody, let alone Paul, takes responsibility. It is not endorsed by anybody associated with this blog. As far as I know, neither is Ron Paul.



UPDATE: YouTube suggests that somebody named rpin2008 (whoever that is) claims responsibility.

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Congress Beginning To Take Notice of Bradley Schlozman

McClatchy's Greg Gordon and Margaret Talev are reporting this morning that

Congressional investigators are beginning to focus on accusations that a top civil rights official at the Justice Department illegally hired lawyers based on their political affiliations, especially for sensitive voting rights jobs. . . . .

A congressional aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that the House and Senate Judiciary Committees want to look beyond Goodling to see whether other department officials may have skewed recruiting and hiring to favor Republican applicants. Investigators have heard allegations that Schlozman showed a political bias in hiring and hope the department will permit him to be interviewed voluntarily, the aide said.

The story indicates that Claire McCaskill really wants to put Schlozman under oath.

UPDATE: Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker is reporting that since 2003 not a single black has been hired by the criminal section of Civil Rights Division. As a result there are only 2 black attorneys out of 50 in the criminal section.

As Richard Ugelow, the former deputy section chief of the employment section in the Civil Rights Division puts it, "We would sue employers for having numbers like that." Ugelow, you might have guessed, is one of the dozens of career lawyers who have left the division in the past six years.

ABC's Washington D.C. affiliate WJLA-TV deserves credit for crunching the numbers. Kiel notes:

The Justice Department responded to WJLA-TV's story by saying that the Civil Rights Division as a whole is the most diverse office in the Department of Justice.

I guess they just don't want black lawyers charging and trying white businessmen. That could be bad for Republican fundraising.

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Is The Long Neo-Conservative Nightmare Really Over?

Glen Greenwald says the Republican noise machine, and their allies in the corporate press are no longer able to gain traction when they try to unfairly tar and feather Democrats. Trex echos Greenwald in a post called the "Incredible Shrinking Right." He points to the long overdue collapse of David Broder from "from Beltway Godhead to Bleating Dickhead in just a few short, easy steps" as an example of the rapid decline of conservatism. Kevin Drum points to an article by Michael Finnegan in the LA Times indicating that Republican regulars are too embarrassed by their party to answer poll questions. A commenter named Dave over at TMP (I can't find the comment right now) points to a significant decline in the number of comments at Redstate.com. It's true. You go to Redstate and they are posting, but nobody is commenting. You would think the site is a start-up like WTWC instead of a site that became valuable enough to be sold by the founders for real money.

What does it all mean? First, Americans are fed up with Iraq. They have been to the mall and have returned to discover the President has tied down our army occupying a country that doesn't want to be occupied. It is a country that only one American really wants to occupy. Sadly his name is George Bush. Second, Americans were appalled by Katrinia, and the lack of response shown by the administration to other Americans during their hour of need. It has dawned on many Americans that this administration puts the success of a small gang of cronies above all. Not many of us are in that small gang, which is really a subset of a subset of a subset. Third, the Alberto Gonzales hearings have demonstrated that for this crowd the department of justice is just another political tool. David Iglesias was on Bill Maher the other night. Maher gave the story perspective. At the end Iglesias was called a hero for putting his country ahead of his party. Maher's house Republicans sat on their hands looking embarrassed.

It sounds like our team is on a roll. We are finally winning. Well, during all of this I have been reading a series of books about the Civil War. You know, during the Civil War there were any number of battles where one side or the other thought it had won. Their soldiers stopped fighting. Sometimes they started looting. The other side rallied and ran the "victors" right off the battlefield.

Yes, Republicans are down right now, but they are down because of their own failures. Primarily they are down because they realize they have supported a maladministration that doesn't really share their core values. They are embarrassed because they have been hosed by the neo-cons. Folks, the Republican base will recover and will gain control of their party, maybe not in time for 2008, but recover they will.

The Democrats have yet to actually achieve anything. The war in Iraq continues unabated. We don't have universal health care. America's industrial base continues to decline. We still face a host of complicated social issues that have yet to be addressed. George Bush's maladministration is still in power. The justice department is still a wholly owned subsidiary of the RNC and is being run by Karl Rove.

Don't become complacent. Don't start bragging. The battle isn't won. If we let up they will rally and we could be run from the field. We need to make sure we remember that right now the Republican rank and file probably feels betrayed. I don't think they have abandoned their basic principles. We need to make sure we are inclusive and thoughtful when arriving at suggested solutions for Americas problems. Some of their basic principles are pretty much basic Democratic principles. Some aren't but there is room for compromise on many issues. This is a time for Democratic compassion.

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Republican Justice Department Scandals--The Next Generation

Underlying the Gonzales 8 scandal is the fear that the Bush Administration has improperly used the Justice Department to influence election outcomes. This morning Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers has published an in depth look at the issue. He suggests that

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The Justice Department disputes his conclusion that the Justice Department has been politicized to help Republicans and hurt Democrats at the polls, but his evidence is broad and deep. This might be where the Justice Department scandal is heading. Gordon reports that:

Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

-Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

-Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

-Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

-Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.

Of interest to Blue Girl, Gordon reports that the Missouri effort to suppress minority voters was based in the White House.

In Missouri, where Republican Sen. Jim Talent was fighting to hang onto his seat and hold the U.S. Senate for the GOP, a Republican-backed photo ID requirement cleared the state House of Representatives by one vote in May 2006 after an intense lobbying effort in which backers alleged voter fraud in heavily Democratic St. Louis and Kansas City.

"The White House was heavily involved" in the effort to win passage, state Rep. Bryan Stevenson, the Republican floor leader, said in a telephone interview. Stevenson said he wasn't privy to the details of the White House efforts.

You really need to read Gordon's article.

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