Bad Deeds for 11-7-2007

Diebold Recommends ‘Rescheduling Elections’, Calling Voters to ‘Re-Vote’ as Part of Memory Card Failure Procedures – Diebold’s recommendations which “appear to border on the absurd,” that should voting machine memory cards be lost, “elections must be re-scheduled.” Or if they fail, as our recent story concerning Diebold’s admissions about memory card failures in Florida pointed towards, the company says “all voters will have to be called in to re-vote.” please sign VoterAction’s petition calling on Congress to “conduct a full investigation into the dangers associated with the privatization of our public elections and to determine whether certain US voting systems companies have committed crimes under federal and state anti-fraud laws. Take Action

Third Secret Torture Memo From Gonzales Justice Department – Legal papers filed in federal court Monday in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations disclose that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued three secret memorandums relating to interrogation practices of detainees — one more than has been publicly revealed.

Republicans Claim Victory in Kentucky After State Elects a Democratic Governor – RNC Chairman Robert M. “Mike” Duncan today released the following statement on the Kentucky elections: “Democrats targeted Ernie Fletcher from day one, but even with the unique circumstances of the governor’s race, they could not stand in the way of the Republican Party’s fundamental strength in the state. Voters in Kentucky will continue to support lower taxes, limited government, strong national defense, and individual responsibility. Our success today, including the re-election of Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer, made it very clear that the Commonwealth is and will remain a Republican state.”

Chicago Police Taser 82-Year-Old Woman – Chicago’s Police Department is investigating an officer’s use of a Taser last month on an 82-year-old woman who police say was swinging a hammer when they arrived. Lillian Fletcher was rushed to the hospital after being jolted by the Taser last week but has been released, police said Tuesday. Officials with the city’s Department on Aging went to her home Oct. 29 to make a welfare check and called police when they saw Fletcher in a window swinging a hammer, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said Tuesday.

‘War on Terror’ Sinks US Image– “America’s reputation, standing and influence are at all-time lows, and possibly sinking further,” the report by a 20-member think-tank commissioned by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said, citing half a dozen opinion polls from around the world. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 caused America to become a frightened and angry nation,” it said. We reacted in ways that alarmed people the world over … we relied excessively on hard military power to fight the war against terrorists and violent extremists. Ultimately this is a battle that will be won by ideas, not bullets. Just like the Cold War, we will prevail when the world chooses the opportunities we defend over the despair offered by our enemies.”

Bush Political Appointees Contradicted Most Scientific Studies on Endangered Sea Bird – The Bush administration had abruptly proposed a reduction of some 94 percent of the acreage set aside as critical habitat for the marbled murrelet, a small sea bird that nests in old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Julie MacDonald, in the Department of the Interior, questioned reliance on certain scientific documents, urged consideration of unpublished timber industry data, and ultimately rewrote the status review’s conclusion that the murrelets in Washington, Oregon, and California deserved protection. In other words, where agency scientists had determined that the murrelets in the Northwest are a “distinct population segment,” that finding was turned on its head at the last minute.

FBI Tracking Falafel Sales – Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists. The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area. Or maybe falafel sales go up because Bill O’Reilly is in town.

Regards,

Jim