Month: August 2008

FBI – Federal Botching of the Ivins case

by dday

Anyone who was paying attention knew it was going this way:

Federal investigators probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks recovered samples of human hair from a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., but the strands did not match the lead suspect in the case, according to sources briefed on the probe.

FBI agents and U.S. Postal Service inspectors analyzed the data in an effort to place Fort Detrick, Md., scientist Bruce E. Ivins at the mailbox from which bacteria-laden letters were sent to Senate offices and media organizations, the sources said.

First of all, this gaping hole in the case, the lack of any physical evidence putting Ivins at the crime scene, has been obvious from the moment the FBI closed the case. In fact, they’re STILL looking for additional evidence, which should tell you something about how secure they are in their determination that Ivins acted alone. They’re basing the entire case on the remote belief that Ivins checked out of his lab with just enough time to spare to drive 4 hours to Princeton for pretty much no reason and mail the letters. Except the postmark on the letters reflects the day after it would according to the FBI’s own timeline. (The FBI doesn’t even talk about the other letters mailed; presumably they have no evidence tying Ivins to those locations, either). And now this – the hair samples don’t match. That’s really only one of the many questions remaining in the case. The FBI has checked Ivins’s car, his house, his locker, and his safety deposit box and found no traces of anthrax spores. The evidence of the particular strain of anthrax could have been in the hands of up to 100 people, and anyway the DNA testing does not point to any individual. There is just nothing in what the FBI has presented that is in any way conclusive – in fact, more pieces point AWAY from Ivins than toward him. Meryl Nass has the definitive rundown of the Swiss cheese-sized holes in the case.

Congress is holding preliminary hearings, which is a start.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it will call FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to appear at an oversight hearing Sept. 17, when he is likely to be asked about the strength of the government’s case against Ivins. A spokeswoman for Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a vocal FBI critic, said he would demand more information about how authorities narrowed their search.

The House Judiciary panel, meanwhile, is negotiating to hold a separate oversight hearing in September with bureau officials, in a session that could mark the first public occasion in which Mueller faces questions about the FBI’s handling of the anthrax case.

But it’s not enough. The scope of any investigation must be broadened and it would be best if it occurred in the hands of an independent body with subpoena power charged with digging down to the truth. It must be said – if the FBI is not outright lying, they’re certainly trying to cover up their years of mistakes and increasingly intimidating and bullying behavior as they sought a suspect on which to pin the attacks. This is what has become of accountability in Washington, and so a stand must be taken right here. It is unacceptable to let this pass. People died, others were sickened, and the tragedy was turned around and used to sow fear in the public and set us on a course toward unnecessary war. The attacks had a specific political and media target. It’s not good enough for the puzzle to end without a full accounting.

This is especially unnerving because the FBI, the same entity that has consistently screwed up this case for half a dozen years, is about to get a whole bunch of new powers.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey confirmed plans Wednesday to loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations, saying the changes were necessary to improve the bureau’s ability to detect terrorists.

Mukasey said he expected criticism of the new rules because “they expressly authorize the FBI to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States.” However, he said the criticism would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so […]

In addition, agents assigned to national security investigations will be given more latitude to conduct surveillance based on a tip. Also, agents will be permitted to search more databases than allowed previously in criminal cases. As it stands now, agents who get a tip about a possible organized crime figure cannot use certain databases that they are allowed to access in national security cases, such as those containing information about state-issued drivers’ licenses […]

Michael German, a former veteran FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said if Mukasey moves ahead with the new rules as he describes them, he’ll be weakening restrictions originally put in place after the Watergate scandal to rein in the FBI’s domestic Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. At the time, the FBI spied on American political leaders and organizations deemed to be subversive throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s.

If this anthrax case is a test case for how the FBI handles a sensitive domestic terrorism investigation, their powers shouldn’t be increased, they should be removed, and the J. Edgar Hoover Building shuttered. Only a full investigation will lead to the proper and necessary rollback. This agency as it’s currently constructed cannot be trusted to even keep a minimal standard of competency, let alone be trusted with any role in handling national security cases.

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There Will be Bloodlust

by digby

Following on my posts of the last couple of days about how the neocons will use this Georgia crisis to its political advantage, here’s an interesting Q&A with an expert on the region. He says many interesting things about the missteps of the leadership here and in Georgia, and has a different perspective on the relative importance of this event than Harold Meyerson does.

As for the (admittedly, more prosaic dimension of) American politics his observations lead me to believe that I’m right about how this will play out among the conservatives — and how it will affect the perpetually reactive Democrats.

For instance:

What does the future hold for Georgia?

On a personal level, the response to Soviet rule was to create resignation and apathy, and people had a lack of confidence in themselves and assumed that they couldn’t change things. The Rose Revolution changed that a lot, [but now] I think people have lost that new confidence. There’s tremendous bitterness against the United States, ranging from the top of the government to the most ordinary people. It’s sad, because we warned against this adventure, but there’s a universal belief that the United States betrayed Georgia, so you have people who are really in despair and profoundly hopeless. We’ve lost 70 percent of our influence in the Caucasus in four days. The future is very dark, I think, unless either the Georgian public or the American government becomes much, much more serious and tries to retrieve the situation. That can happen, but one can’t bet on it.

That sense of betrayal is going to be used by the neocons as a rallying cry for their revitalized cold war cause. And they will be agitating and pushing the debate and coercing anyone who disagrees on the basis of a myth that the US abandoned a Democratic ally because it refused to confront an evil enemy. It’s their most successful theme.

I fully expect to see a Committee To Liberate Georgia and a Washington Lobby formed by this time next year with a full blown push for a Georgia Liberation Act following not far behind. (I suspect they will also hope that an Obama administration will be too smart or too practical not to do what they want, the better to gain domestic political leverage as they refurbish the conservative image.)

The neocons and their hawkish buddies are not like other people. They don’t learn from their errors or make any changes in strategy due to facts or experience or even embarrassment. They just keep repeating themselves over and over and over again, decade after decade, without any acknowledgment of their failures, simply changing the rhetoric to represent a different country on the Risk board. Indeed, that may be the whole point. Conservative hawks, in one form or another, have managed to dominate American foreign policy ever since WWII, in both the presidency and as a political constituency in Washington. They do it through red-baiting, race-baiting and chauvinistic appeals to demaaahcracy ‘n freedom. It’s been tough for them lately, with Iraq being an epic cock-up and Iran just not being a worthy adversary for a superpower. Terrorism doesn’t fit their worldview. A resumption of the cold war, however, would be a return to their glory days. The Democrats would be fools not to be prepared this time.

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Obamacans And Elders

by digby

I’ve been wondering about this too:

…are there enough rank-and-file Republicans whispering their support at Obama rallies to actually make a difference on Election Day?

I discovered from examination the last 18 months of head-to-head general election polls, the answer seems to be “no.” In fact, John McCain’s share of the Democratic vote has typically–and surprisingly–been larger than Obama’s share of the Republican vote. In other words, it’s not that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scared the Obamacan masses off, as some pundits have theorized–it’s that they never existed (in any unprecedented way) to begin with. In December 2006–before the unfamiliar Illinois senator had officially announced his candidacy–McCain attracted 25 support among Dems versus Obama’s eight percent among Repubs, according to a FOX News poll**. Those numbers tightened over the next few months of polling by various firms, but Obama never established a sustained lead. A February 2007 Quinnipiac survey showed McCain with 17 percent crossover support, for example, versus nine percent for Obama; in a June 2007 sounding by the same outlet, McCain still led 15 percent to 11. During primary season–between December 2007 and April 2008–McCain’s Democratic number typically hovered between 18 and 22. Obama, meanwhile, never climbed higher than 13 percent.

Much of this gap can be attributed to the primary clash with Clinton, whose supporters often said they preferred McCain to Obama in head-to-head polls taken before the final Democratic contests on June 3. But even though McCain’s support among Dems declined after Hillary bowed out–a natural result of Democratic unity–Obama’s Republican backing didn’t budge. Today, Republicans for Obama and Democrats for McCain effectively cancel each other out. The latest numbers from CBS News show Obama at 11 percent crossover support and McCain at 10 (and tied among Independents); FOX News puts the pair at six percent and seven percent, respectively–a result that closely matches where George W. Bush (nine percent crossover) and John Kerry (seven percent crossover) stood at this point in 2004. That also deadlock mirrors 2000, when George W. Bush won over 11 percent of Democratic voters and Al Gore poached eight percent of Republicans–and it means that neither Obama nor McCain, both of whom have repeatedly boasted of their “strong record[s] of bringing people together from the left and the right to solve problems,” can currently rely crossover voters to carry them to victory.

I’m not saying Obamacans don’t exist. They do. It’s just that there’s little statistical evidence to support the claim that the number of Republicans who favor this year’s Democrat is substantially larger than the number of Republicans who favored his predecessors.

This is going to be a turnout election. And lucky for the Democrats, the rank and file is far more motivated than the other side. I think it’s fine if the campaign wants to set forth some myth of “cross-over” voting but I pray they aren’t actually counting on it.

In that regard, I see no advantage to picking a VP designed to appeal to Republicans because they are not going to vote for him anyway. He needs to re-excite the base, including the Clinton voters who are still skeptical, get those new voters all riled up and win this by sheer numbers of Democrats, old and new.

The problem he really needs to deal with is this:

With polls showing Obama dominating among those under 40 and running even among middle-aged voters, Republican John McCain’s lead among those 65 and older is the main reason he remains close overall. His margin is largest among older white voters without a college education, accounting for much of Obama’s problem with the white working class.

Obama has tried to compensate by proposing a tax cut for seniors, which was criticized by economists. But as Rutherford’s comments suggest and surveys show, Obama’s challenge goes deeper than a new proposal or two — an approach that worked for Clinton against George H.W. Bush and Robert J. Dole.

It isn’t baby boomer women or the still-working white working class who are not warming to Obama in the usual numbers for a Democrat. It’s people over 65. If it’s purely generational, then this crop of seniors is quite different than others who voted for Clinton and Gore with no problems — and they were both younger in 1992 than Obama is now. True, he has less political experience than they had, but Clinton was an obscure Governor with a reputation for being a hedonistic, draft dodging, womanizing hippie. The elders voted for him anyway.

I won’t waste my breath speculating on why Obama is failing to get these voters where others succeeded, but let’s just say it is a problem. McCain’s negative ads are likely aimed directly at them.

The youth vote had better be gargantuan if they expect it to cancel out the loss of these folks. They always vote. It would be far preferable to try to get them.

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I Will Resist The Evan Bayh Puns…

by dday

… but I will not resist registering my disapproval.

When I first heard all the speculation around Evan Bayh as a Vice-Presidential pick I thought that was a sure bet, given the Obama campaign’s button-down approach, that he wouldn’t be selected. But many in the DC establishment are ferociously pushing him as a choice, and Steve Clemons’ very informed take leads me to believe that the option is credible.

Word has reached me that at Barack Obama’s Hawaii retreat, Evan Bayh’s chances to find himself the next Democratic VP candidate have moved to better than 50/50.

The conflict between Georgia and Russia has been one of several factors that has helped boost his status. Bayh’s support of the Iraq War and general hawkishness are seen by some as a balance to Obama’s call for a new and different kind of global engagement strategy that McCain’s followers consider naive.

That would be such a crucial mistake. Bayh’s “hawkishness” led him to co-chair the neocon “Committee to Liberate Iraq” in 1998, an astonishing error that gave credibility to President Bush to start his illegal and unnecessary war in 2003. Look who else was involved with it, beyond the usual neocon suspects like Bill Kristol and foreign agent lobbyist Randy Scheunemann:

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) is pleased to welcome Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) as an Honorary Co-Chairman. Bayh becomes the third U.S. Senator to join the committee after Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced their participation on January 28.

It could be, then, that 3/4 of the major party Presidential tickets, in a time of failed neoconservative policies worldwide, would have chaired this committee.

Bayh has renounced his Iraq vote. And Nate Silver considers him to be about as liberal as he can be given that he represents Indiana. But I agree with Tom Andrews – the neocon embrace in 1998 is just too much.

“He was not only wrong, he was aggressively wrong,” said Tom Andrews, national director of the Win Without War coalition, referring to Mr. Bayh. “In my view, he would contradict if not undermine the Obama message of change, turning a new page on foreign policy and national security.”

Exactly. Bayh is a milquetoast centrist who wouldn’t upset the establishment and would recede into the background and not compete with the more charismatic top of the ticket. But as Swopa notes, he’d be a terrible President, and after all that’s the point of a VP selection. And he would send a very loud message to the Democratic elites that they’re still in charge and Obama will fall right in line. They’ve as much as said it already:

“The antiwar people cannot define the Democratic Party,” said Al From, a founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, of which Mr. Bayh was chairman for four years. “I think Evan’s real strength is you get someone on the ticket who has a record of being strong on national security, and that is a very important quality to have.”

“Strong on national security” should actually read “wrong on the biggest foreign policy issue of his lifetime.” I hope the NYT will make a correction.

I’m part of the Facebook group opposing Evan Bayh. You should join it too. Ari Melber has more in the Windy, and he unearths this quote from a year ago showing Bayh’s continued wrongheadedness on foreign policy:

You just hope that we haven’t soured an entire generation on the necessity, from time to time, of using force because Iraq has been such a debacle. That would be tragic, because Iran is a grave threat. They’re everything we thought Iraq was but wasn’t. They are seeking nuclear weapons, they do support terrorists, they have threatened to destroy Israel, and they’ve threatened us, too.

Boy, he sure learned his lesson, right?

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Presumptuous Maverick

by digby

Yglesias says:

[I]t looks like Mikhail Saakashvili thought it meant something when John McCain proclaimed America and Georgia to be identical:

“Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

Bush came through for McCain and Saakashvili:

The United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia…I have directed a series of steps to demonstrate our solidarity with the Georgian people and bring about a peaceful resolution to this conflict.

You’ll recall that both Bush and Obama were far more circumspect in their language when this thing first started. McCain came charging out of the gate with chest thumping bellicosity and soon Bush (and Obama, to a lesser degree) followed. Events certainly changed perspectives, but there’s no doubt who is the leader of American foreign policy on this matter — Senator John McCain.

Now, Russia too has called the US on its loose talk:

Russia accused the United States on Wednesday of playing a dangerous game in the Caucasus by backing Georgia and denied Moscow was not doing enough to prevent looting.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington had to choose between partnership with Moscow and the Georgian leadership which he described as a “virtual project”.

“We understand that this current Georgian leadership is a special project of the United States, but one day the United States will have to choose between defending its prestige over a virtual project or real partnership which requires joint action,” Lavrov told reporters.

John McCain was the first one out of the box with the evil empire crap and it very well may have led the Bush administration to follow for political — and maybe personal — reasons. (Bush is being dinged by the wingnuts for failing to show enough machismo.)

I remember reading some stuff recently about how it was unseemly for Barack Obama to go on an overseas trip. Why, he was acting like he’d already won! Now, we have McCain making statements on television that are having an actual impact on an international crisis, and which might even be illegal, and I’m hearing gasbags say he looks very presidential. It looks more like presumptuousness to me.

But then a grizzled old veteran’s presumptuousness isn’t the same as a young, African American upstart’s, is it?

Update: Even Jonathan Martin at the Politico sees something amiss with this one:

I think Greg Sargent is on to something regarding McCain’s announcement at his press conference today that Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — his two closest friends in the Senate — will be heading to Georgia soon.

Yes, they’re both members of the Armed Services Committee. But McCain’s declaration has something of a shadow government feel to it, as though he’s sending his own emissaries into the war zone.

Try to imagine if Obama had announced that he was sending Biden and Levin to the war zone.

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Summer Of Drummers

by digby

Here’s a must read essay by Harold Meyerson in today’s Washington Post. It puts the Russia-Georgia-China Olympics events of this week into the proper perspective, I think, which is a huge relief since I keep reading different views from people I respect (and don’t respect) and this issue seems to have turned the intellectual world into ideological hamburger.

This captures the big picture, anyway:

The summer of ’08, historians will most likely tell us, signaled the rise of a multi-power, non-Western-dominated planet. It also was the time when it became clear that the American Century would not lap over from the 20th into the 21st.

Russia’s invasion is surely the most shocking of these developments but also the least ground-breaking. It fits perfectly into that most ancient of great-power traditions — asserting semi-sovereignty over its immediate neighbors.

The United States even has a name for its right to intervene in its neighbors’ affairs: the Monroe Doctrine. And just as Russia moved to undermine a militantly pro-American government on its borders, so the United States moved to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs and depose the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and green-lighted an attempted coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in 2002. None of these interventions brought any credit to either the United States or Russia, but neither were they something new under the sun.

Russia today is a mix of neo-czarist authoritarianism domestically and pan-Slavic belligerence internationally. Its clout resides not in its political beliefs and practices — unlike Leninism, pan-Slavism is not likely to win any non-Slavic adherents — or in its economic model but in its reserves of oil and natural gas, on which Europe in particular is dependent. It is not our proto-democratic buddy, but neither is it the kind of threat that requires ginning up the Cold War again, as John McCain and his neoconservative brethren seem to believe.

China is something else again. If ever there was a display of affable collectivism, it was filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s opening ceremonies, which in their reduction of humans to a mass precision abstraction seemed to derive in equal measure from Busby Berkeley and Leni Riefenstahl. (Much of Berlin’s 1936 Olympics, we should recall, was choreographed by Riefenstahl to fit the fascist aesthetics of her film “Olympiad.”) The subject of Zhang’s ceremonies was a celebration of Chinese achievement and power, at all times stressing China’s harmonious relations with the rest of the world.

The great irony, of course, is that this was supposed to be the epoch of the Pax Americana. Ooops.

But that was never a realistic course. Americans have the world’s largest military and the most advanced economy, but we, as a nation, are not Spartans — we are fat mall shoppers who will rise to the occasion and fight when necessary but really have no desire to rule the world as a military empire. Indeed, as Meyerson suggests, the real problem is that our true calling as an international power — as rapacious global capitalists — is where the biggest challenge lies.

Meyerson calls attention to what he calls the masterstroke of the opening Olympic ceremonies; the decision to feature the little hero of the earthquake, the boy who went back to save his schoolmates because he was hall monitor and it was his duty. Meyerson points out that this “cuddly capitalist-Leninism, already much beloved by our major banks and corporations for its low-wage efficiency, poses a genuine economic challenge to the messier, unsynchronized workings of democracies. A nation that can assemble 2,000 perfectly synchronized drummers has clearly staked its claim as the world’s assembly line.”

Once again, I’m struck by how much the neocons and their fellow travelers are similar to those they purport to hate. They too are nationalists, who would be proud to have Americans marching in lockstep to the tune of a (properly conservative) government on the world stage. (The Randians would naturally prefer that the ceremony be sponsored by a multi-national corporation, for “freedom’s” sake.)

John McCain and the boys are always ready to go marching into wherever the current crisis spot is, and as this article demonstrates, the Bush Administration has been busily preparing the military for just such events. There was a time when I might have believed that there was no chance that any administration of any political persuasion could be stupid or reckless enough to do something as rash as to drop into hot spots like Georgia with a military presence. Obviously, after the last few years, I’ve been schooled. These people are definitely capable of such things.

In fact, they yearn to do it (and clearly believe that any place that has access to the precious commodity is fair game.) And that’s the rub. These two things are not unrelated. The knee jerk bellicosity isn’t just ideological, although it certainly is. It’s also a lack of imagination about how to deal with this growing economic challenge. One of the prevailing beliefs on the right seems to be that we should simply take what we need, and that means controlling (or at least presiding over) the world’s oil supply.

But Americans just aren’t good at synchronized drumming or military imperialism and for most people even our days of being content on the assembly line are behind us. I suppose we could learn,and we may have to if things go bad, but it’s not really our nature. Neither mythic rugged individualism or soft BestBuyGAP-style conformity lend themselves to such things.

Meyerson’s right. If that kid had been an American we would have expected him to go into the school because th trapped kids were his friends or to do for Jesus or do it without thinking because he’s a good kid. It would be wholly out of character for an American kid to save his friends out of “duty” to his school. We just don’t think that way. It’s entirely possible that for all of our glib talk about spreadin’ democracy ‘n freedom, China is the one that is going to be the model for success in this new world, as unpleasant as we may think that is.

Meanwhile, McCain is milking this for all he’s got and it looks like we’re about to see if he can persuade the American people that we are a proud warrior race who will smite evil and darkness wherever we see it (while eating Big Macs and watching TV, naturally.)

Be sure to read all of Meyerson’s column.

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Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf

by dday

Either we’re ruled by idiots, or we’re ruled by people who think we’re idiots, but either explanation is no excuse:

The Bush administration suggested yesterday that an apparent cease-fire in Georgia came about because Moscow feared it would be banished from Western-dominated international economic and political institutions if it did not stop its “aggression” in the former Soviet republic.

“Russia has one foot into the international community . . . and one foot that is not,” a senior administration official said. Membership in institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the Group of Eight major industrialized nations “is what is at stake when Russia engages in behavior that looks like it came from another time.”

Yeah, that was it. It wasn’t that there was no need for Putin to occupy a fractious republic because they see the model of an imperialist power being bled dry by trying to control the territory of a people who reject their presence.

I hate to interrupt the “we did it!” party at the White House, but we actually aren’t always the central factor in global conflicts. The biggest evidence of that being that Russia is still moving military convoys inside Georgia.

…does this remind anyone else of the warbloggers sitting in their basements and thinking they were winning the Iraq war by posting a snarky comment?

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Huzzah

by digby

A win for the good guys:

Jared Polis CO-02 won a hard-fought 3-way primary last night against two worthy Democratic opponents. Blue America has been enthusiastic about his potential as a progressive leader for a long time and we are excited to endorse him on the night of his victory. Jared will be the first openly gay man to ever win a seat in Congress as a freshman.

An in one of those red states filled with Real Americans too.

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Rolling In The Mud With Pigs: The Sickening Sequel

by digby

Is there anything this POS can say in public that will make family values Republicans like the entire Bush family finally say enough?

LIMBAUGH: Well, it’s — I mean, at some point, at some point, you gotta exhibit maturity and restraint. You know, and I do that constantly. But — well, I don’t — look, let me see if I can run you through this and get you to think what I’m thinking without my actually saying it. That might be a pretty big talent if I could do that — make you think what I’m going to say without my having to say it, therefore if anybody gets in trouble for saying it, you say it.

We know — we’ve been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That’s part of the puff pieces on them that we’ve seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn’t shut up? Now, that’s as far as I’m going to go.

Well, you’re — Snerdley says he’s missing something. If you’re missing it, you’re going to have to provide it. What are you missing? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

I can’t close the loop on it. I can’t close the loop on it. I’m on — you know, I’m in a little quicksand already today talking about how the chicks are giving us boring pictures of the female athletes from the Olympics. Because I know — you — the diversity crowd’s going to be upset. They’re going to — “Ooh, do you mean the Olympics are just so you guys can ogle wom–” Yes, because we do not care to watch ’em compete. But back to Elizabeth and the Breck Girl.

I’m sorry, my friends, I just — I can’t. It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk.

[…]

LIMBAUGH: OK, we’re back. Ladies and gentleman, my theory that I just explained to you about why — you know, what could have John Edwards’ motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk. I think I can back this up from her.

We have a sound bite. This is February 2007. She was on the tabloid show Extra. And this is what she said. Listen very carefully.

HUNTER : The whole experience was life-altering for me. One of the great things about John Edwards is that he’s so open and willing to try new things and do things in new ways.

LIMBAUGH: “Open to new things.” Folks, it is what it is. You get mad at me for bringing the truth to you, but it is what it is.

It’s hard to believe such a rich, classy guy is single, isn’t it?

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The New Battleground

by dday

With an uninspiring candidate, an enthusiasm gap and a host of fundamentals against them, obstruction and suppression is really all the Republicans have left. You can see exactly where they’re worried from this story:

As Barack Obama tries to draw hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls, Republicans are beginning to scrutinize registrants’ eligibility as both sides draw a major battle line over voting rights.

Republicans are moving to examine surges in voter registrations in some states. A Republican lawyers group held a national training session on election law over the weekend that included campaign attorneys for Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders. One session discussed how party operatives can identify and respond to instances of voter fraud.

Republicans said they are particularly worried about prospects for fraud in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and are beginning to comb thousands of new registrations in those states for ineligible applicants. In some cases the huge numbers threaten to swamp their efforts — and those of state and local governments to verify and process applications.

Read: we’re going to lose Virginia and Pennsylvania unless we invalidate hundreds of thousands of legal votes through bogus voter fraud claims. Both of the Secretaries of State in these commonwealths are Democrats, but of course the county boards of elections have more local control, as we’ve seen. And be prepared for this meme that the stress of all these new voters may break the system.

The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, which monitors elections, projects registrations this year will surpass the total from any previous single election year, building on momentum from the record 20 million registrations for the combined election cycles of 2004 and 2006. Newcomers helped drive turnouts for the Democratic primaries, which drew roughly 19.5 million more voters than in 2004, according to the Democratic National Committee.

“State elections systems have shown signs of stress, and there’s a serious concern that they won’t be able to handle the number of voters,” said Wendy Weiser at the Brennan Center.

In Pennsylvania, where improper registrations have been a problem in past elections, state officials say rolls have increased by about 230,000, to 8.4 million, since the 2006 midterm elections. Some observers believe the large increase could invite more potential for voter-fraud problems, said Lawrence Tabas, general counsel of the state Republican Party. “When you get so many new registrations like that at record numbers…it’s very difficult for people to monitor the validity of it,” he said.

The roar of voter fraud will reach its loudest din in the next few months. The RNC has been laying the groundwork for this for over a year, and the power players on the right for longer than that. And we have a candidate whose entire strategy is predicated on inviting more people into the political process.

The McCain campaign is trying to let this happen without their imprint on it. Yet at that little St. Louis get-together which Digby wrote about last week included McCain’s Election Day coordinator, Michael Roman.

Check out this bit of narrative setting from a member of the voter fraud brigade:

Ms. Mitchell warned about what she regards as a long pattern of abuses in registration by groups such as Acorn and their Democratic allies. “We’re all for getting people involved in the process…and getting them to the polls,” she said in an interview later. “What we’re not for is registering fake people at fake addresses, and creating barriers to trying to identify voter fraud where it exists, which is everywhere. It’s a growing problem, because of the professional vote-fraud denier industry.”

She urged lawyers working on behalf of state and local party groups and campaigns to monitor new registrations. She also pointed out that Sen. Obama himself — in his past life as a community organizer — was “involved” with some of the groups that have been responsible for abuses in recent years.

That’s right. Obama himself is personally stealing the election by writing “Mickey Mouse” on voter registration cards and then showing up at the polls in that hat with ears you get at Disneyland.

Interesting, too, that they’re throwing the “denier” meme back in Democrats’ faces.

There’s no limit to my amount of worry about this. And as Digby has said, whether they can suppress enough votes to steal the election or not, they can delegitimize the results and run back every statement made about Bush v. Gore in reverse. They’re very good at things like that. It comes with the lack of shame.

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