If anyone remembers the 2004 presidential elections, you remember the story of the madness that went on in Ohio. Thanks the the scams, shams and dirty tricks of our former secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, we saw an election stolen. Yeah, I said it.

So, a year after Blackwell is out of the picture (he was trounced when he ran for governor here), we still see that Ohio is vulnerable for a repeat of 2004.

Take a look:

All five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election, a report commissioned by the state’s top elections official has found.

“It was worse than I anticipated,” the official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, said of the report. “I had hoped that perhaps one system would test superior to the others.”

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers.

Ms. Brunner proposed replacing all of the state’s voting machines, including the touch-screen ones used in more than 50 of Ohio’s 88 counties. She wants all counties to use optical scan machines that read and electronically record paper ballots that are filled in manually by voters.

She called for legislation and financing to be in place by April so the new machines can be used in the presidential election next November. She said she could not estimate the cost of the changes.

Well, let’s see how this works out. Right now, it looks like the game’s still afoot in Ohio.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Back in July, I stated that something stunk about the case against seven Miami, Florida men the government claimed was plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. The issue that I saw was that these men had neither the talent or the means to carry out this plot. In fact, their so-called weapons training involved going paintball shooting. They had so little money that the FBI agent who “infiltrated” them had to buy them boots. The agent says that the swore allegience to al Quaeda but the only “contact” they had with anyone in al Quaeda was the agent himself, who claimed to be tied to al Quaeda.

So, today, the Bush administration got egg on its face. They and a lot of right-wing talking heads spoke about breaking up this plot justified all the Bush administrations actions in its so-called war on terror. Today, a jury acquitted one of the men involved and had a hung jury on the other six:

The mistrial means prosecutors will have to decide whether to retry the six men.

The outcome was a setback for the Bush administration, which had seized on the case to illustrate the dangers of homegrown terrorism and trumpet the government’s post-Sept. 11 success in infiltrating and smashing terror plots in their earliest stages.

Lyglenson Lemorin, who was not the alleged ringleader, was acquitted.

The jury gave up on the other defendants after nine days of deliberations on four terrorism-related conspiracy charges that carry a combined maximum of 70 years in prison. The jury of six men and six women twice sent notes to the presiding judge indicating they could not reach verdicts but were told to keep trying. The mistrial came after their third note.

To this, I quote what I wrote in July:

“…hyping up cases like this makes me question if we are serious about battling terrorism or if it’s more like our war on drugs — just occasionally bust a few people to make it seem like something is really being done and keep your political office for another term.”

Popularity: 24% [?]

When people complained to me about Barry Bonds and steroids my response always went like the following — “Who’s to say that he had some unfair advantage? For example, how many times did he go to bat against a pitcher on steroids or an outfielder on steroids”. Not excusing steroid abuse but, it didn’t begin or end with Barry Bonds.

Well, it looks like I have some vindication today. The dreaded Mitchell Report (pdf) was released today and it named some 80 players accused of juicing.

Among them are pitching hero Roger “the Rocket” Clemens, Albert Pujols, Andy Pettitte and many others.

So, while many vilified Bonds and said his home run record should have an asterisk by it, I wonder if these same folks we be as loud about the records that may be held by some of these offenders.

Popularity: 16% [?]

It seems that some in California wanted to make sure that the only black students in state colleges were the ones who could run, tackle or dribble.

This was because, in 2006, Proposition 209, led by the king of the buck-dancers, Ward Connerly, remove affirmative action considerations in admission to state schools.

What this meant was reduced black enrollment. However, more ironically, this reduced white enrollment at the University of California, as well. You see, when affirmative action was removed, Asian student numbers rose by 6%, Hispanic enrollment rose by 3% and white enrollment fell by 8%. This was certainly not what the backers of this initiative had envisioned.

Nonetheless, UCLA didn’t want to lose out on recruiting qualified black students, either. So, they set about working with private organizations to help make a University of California education possible and affordable for more black students. As a result, black freshman enrollment increased by more than 100% from the previous year. 100 freshman enrolled in 2006. In 2007, then number was 203. Certainly, this could be a lot better but, it is good to see things trending in a positive direction.

So, I say, welcome back, Black college students!

Popularity: 23% [?]

If you liked him, hated him or simply considered him to be the butt of jokes, there was no denying Ike Turner’s contributions to American popular music.

Ike Turner played on what was considered the first rock n’ roll record, was a prolific musician and songwriter and introduced the world to Tina Turner.

Sadly, Ike Turner was also a spousal abuser and, for many years, a drug addict.

Nonetheless, this past February, 10 years after he sobered up, he won a Grammy for best traditional blues for is album, “Risin’ With The Blues”.

Ike Turner passed away today. He was 76 years old.

Popularity: 11% [?]

When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, one of the big scandals was his affair with his now-third wife, Judith Nathan, when he was still married to second wife Donna Hanover. The situation was so scandalous that his then-wife went to court to keep Nathan from “visiting” Giuliani in the mayor’s mansion because Hanover and the couple’s two children were still there. Previously, in an even more trifling move, Giuliani’s wife found out about their impending divorce when he announced it on TV.

However, there was another side to this scandal that did not hit the national news until recently. Giuliani had a security detail for his then-mistress, paid for by taxpayer dollars. To top that, the details about these expenses were hidden the budgets of other departments so as not to raise too many questions.

Now, the heat is on Rudy for this one (this is probably why he’s dropping futher in the primary polling). He went on Meet the Press and got grilled by Tim Russert over this. In a clip that’s both humorous and painful to watch, Giuliani tries to explain, unsuccessfully, that it was not his decision to get security for his mistress, it was a decision made by his security staff.

Sorry, Rudy. No one’s buying it. (Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the clip)

 

 Giuliani's Mistress Scandal: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 12% [?]

Four Chicago men will receive a settlement of nearly $20 million for the alleged torture at the hands of Chicago Police. In July 2006, a report revealed that at least 5 Chicago police officers used torture to get confessions out of suspects. These officers utilized tactics as extreme as electric shock and Russian roulette to force confessions. As a result, the men — Leroy Orange, Stanley Howard, Madison Hobley and Aaron Patterson — ended up on death row.

These men were released after each spending more than a decade on death row while the ringleader for this torture, police commander Jon Burge finished out his career and retired in Florida.

These were not the first or the last instances of such tactics by police. However, with settlements such as this, let’s hope that more cities give a long, hard look at how their officers are behaving.

Popularity: 32% [?]

If you’re British, that is.

That’s right, one more in the “coalition of the willing” is saying it’s time to pack it in.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the combat duties of British troops in Basra, Iraq will cease in two weeks. Brown says the troops will switch to training roles and Iraqis will take over defense.

Furthermore, Brown says the 4,500 troops in Iraq will be cut to 2,500 by early 2008. On top of that, he is saying that the remaining troops may all be out of Iraq by March 2008.

However, the most telling detail in all of this is what Brown said in regards to why he feels the troops can leave:

“Since Our Boys withdrew from Basra’s city centre and palace to the airport a few miles away back in September attacks on them have fallen by 90 per cent.”

Did you get that? After they left, the violence went down. In other words, they quit occupying a city and the citys’ residents stopped attacking them. Did you hear that President Bush?

I’m sure this detail will be conveniently ignored in the coverage of Britain’s withdrawl.

So, Britain’s basically out. When are we leaving?

Popularity: 21% [?]

Okay, more campaign junk.

A while back, I posted about the silly rumor questioning whether or not Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim. The man has said for many years that he is Christian so, it’s a non-starter. My problem with all of this was that the implication of this rumor wasn’t whether or not he was a practicing Muslim but whether or not he had ties to terrorism or was a terrorist sympathizer. In this country, we want to believe that every Muslim is secretly a fanatic bent on destroying the world. Of course, if we were honest, we’d realize that fanatics exist in all religions and Christianity has more than its fair share.

Now, back to the point. This rumor was one that had made its way around the right-wing blogs, pundit cirlces and, of course, Fox News. CNN shot down this lie a while back but, the right-wing echo chamber wouldn’t let it die.

Not wanting to be left out of the party, some Democrats have repeated the lie. Volunteers tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign have been asked to resign after it was determined they were forwarding out copies of a hoax email claiming Barack Obama is a Muslim who may be intent on destroying America.

In part, the email read:

“Let us all remain alert concerning Obama’s expected presidential Candidacy. Please forward to everyone you know. The Muslims have said they Plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at The highest level.”

At first, it was believed that Iowa volunteer Judy Rose was the only culprit (incident alleged to have happened on Nov. 21) but, a staffer for the Chris Dodd campaign provided the Associated Press with another such email that was dated much earlier (Oct 5), sent by Iowa staffer Linda Olson.

As stated previously, both were asked to resign.

This is just a reminder of how big a prize the presidency is and how dirty some folks will play to get their person in office. However, this is probably mild compared the the mud we can expect to see in the run-up to the general elections.

Hold on, the ride’s gonna get bumpy.

Popularity: 13% [?]

You might not know how I feel about prosperity pimpin’ preaching but, let’s just say I’m not a fan. More importantly, I am concerned about how certain people prey on the faith of followers to create extravagant lifestyles for themselves. Like I’ve stated before, the Bible tells of how Jesus threw the money-changers out of the church but, they came back with a vengeance.

Now, many decades and, easily, billions of dollars later, the Senate is starting to look into what these megachurch ministers are doing with the money contributed to their ministries. This is, primarily, the work of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. His goal is to determine whether or not these pastors are complying with IRS rules in regards to the money they are personally receiving in their roles as ministers. As you know, despite their opulence, these churches are tax-exempt.

Six months ago, Grassley sent out questionnaires to 6 ministries. To date, only one, Joyce Meyer Ministries, has responded to Grassley’s request, along with supporting documentation. Those that have not responded include Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and Bishop Eddie Long Ministries of Lithonia, Ga.; Randy and Paula White of Without Walls International Church and Paula White Ministries of Tampa, Fla.; and Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries of Newark, Texas.

However, there are two ministries that are basically telling Grassley to go to hell (sorry, I couldn’t resist). They are Benny Hinn of World Healing Center Church Inc. and Benny Hinn Ministries of Grapevine, Texas (who said he would not respond until 2008) and Creflo Dollar of World Changers Church International. Dollar had his lawyers tell Grassley that “the investigation should be referred to the IRS or the Senate panel should get a subpoena for the documents.”

According to many of these preachers who did not comply, the IRS already knows about their finances but, according to Grassley, he is uncovering things the IRS never knew.

Who knows? Subpoenas might be coming soon. If so, I’ll have my popcorn ready and my TV tuned to C-Span.

Popularity: 20% [?]