The longer the “Attorneygate” scandal goes on, the more questions arise. Yesterday, two Democratic senators are calling for a probe into the actions of former Arkansas U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin. Specifically, Sens. Edward Kennedy and Sheldon Whitehouse want to know Griffin’s role in disenfranchising black voters in Florida.

This goes back to a time before he became a U.S. Attorney and was working as an operative for the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election cycle. As Republicans were busy playing games with the rights of black voters, emails were flying around between operatives that, if made public, would have shown that what they were doing was, in a word, illegal.

Well, some errant emails were sent to georgewbush.org, a site that actually was/is critical of President Bush but, Griffin must have thought he was sending them to someone at georgewbush.com, a site for the Bush re-election campaign. Attached to the email was a list of some 2,000 names of black Jacksonville, FL residents who were potential voters. The titles of the emails were “caging”. The attached file was a “caging” list.

The idea behind a caging list was that the Republicans would send out letters to these folks by registered mail with a card they would have to return. If they did not return the card, the Republicans could then challenge the votes of those people by claiming that they were voting fraudulently by claiming that their home address was bogus.

However, the most sinister part of this was that the Republican party knew that many of the folks on this list would not be able to respond. Why? Well, some were away at school so, they wouldn’t be able to respond in a timely manner. But, there were others, also, who wouldn’t be able to respond either — the black soldiers on the list who were serving in Iraq.

Yes, while black soldiers were away fighting on behalf of their country, their right to vote was being taken away.

Griffin said he never heard the word “caging” before but, the emails he sent bore the subject line “Re: caging” and one of them contained this list.

Hmmm…an email title “caging” with a list attached. Coincidence?

As the heat came, Griffin stepped down as attorney general for Arkansas but, he’s not immune from prosecution. Congressman John Conyers is very interested in Griffin’s actions of 2004 and Sens. Kennedy and Whitehouse, in a very strongly-worded letter (read here), the senators want to know why the Justice Department would hire someone of such dubious credentials as a U.S. Attorney.

Stay tuned. This drama is still heating up.

Also, if you want to be sickened by the lack of coverage in the U.S. media in regards to issues of importance, read Greg Palast’s report on this for the BBC…from 2004.

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