“A Plainly Visible Reality”: Proof That Voter Impersonation Almost Never Happens
An enduring Republican fantasy is that there are armies of fraudulent voters lurking in the baseboards of American life, waiting for the opportunity to crash the polls and undermine the electoral system. It’s never really been clear who these voters are or how their schemes work; perhaps they are illegal immigrants casting votes for amnesty, or poor people seeking handouts. Most Republican politicians know these criminals don’t actually exist, but they have found it useful to take advantage of the party base’s pervasive fear of outsiders, just as when they shot down immigration reform. In this case, they persuaded the base of the need for voter ID laws to ensure “ballot integrity,” knowing the real effect would be to reduce Democratic turnout.
Now a researcher has tried to quantify this supposed threat by documenting every known case of voter fraud since 2000 — specifically, the kind of impersonation that would be stopped by an ID requirement. (Note that this does not include ballot-box stuffing by officials, vote-buying or coercion: the kinds of fraud that would not be affected by an ID law.)
There have been more than 1 billion votes cast in local, state and federal elections over the last 14 years. Out of all of them, the researcher, Justin Levitt, a voting expert at the Loyola University Law School, found 31 cases of impersonation fraud. It’s hardly a surprise that the number is so low; as he writes in the Washington Post today, casting individual fake ballots “is a slow, clunky way to steal an election. Which is why it rarely happens.”
A look at some of the 31 cases shows how pathetic the fraudulent-voter threat really is. In May, Ben Hodzic was accused of voting in his brother’s name in the Catskill, N.Y., School District Board of Education election. In June 2011, Hazel Brionne Woodard of Tarrant County, Tex., allegedly arranged for her son to vote in the municipal runoff elections in the name of his father. In 2004, an unknown person signed the pollbook line as Rose-Mary McGee, of Albuquerque, N.M.
These conspiracies were the pretext for the voter ID laws that have now been passed in 34 states. And the arguments in many of those states have reached an absurdly high pitch. In Virginia, for example, Republicans are saying that the ID card required in their law has to be current; if you happen to let your driver’s license expire, you can’t vote, even though the photo on the card clearly demonstrates your identity. The state’s Democratic attorney general, Mark Herring, says that’s unconstitutional.
But neither the Constitution nor plainly visible reality is likely to halt the Republican crusade to keep certain people from participating in democracy. As the National Commission on Voting Rights documented in a new report, voting discrimination remains “a frequent and ongoing problem,” particularly in the South and Southwest, in part because of new barriers to voting thrown up by state legislators.
“It is difficult not to view these voting changes with a jaundiced eye,” the report says, “given the practical impediments they create and the minimal, if any, measurable legitimate benefit they offer.”
By: David Firestone, Taking Note, Editorial Page Editors Blog, The New York Times, August 6, 2014
“More Unhinged Than Usual”: Ted Cruz Sees An Imaginary ‘Economic Boycott Of Israel’
Just last week, a civilian airliner was shot down over a war zone, killing all 298 people on board. On Tuesday, just five days after the tragedy in Ukraine, a rocket landed Tuesday within a mile of Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
In the interest of public safety and fearing a “potentially hazardous security situation,” the Federal Aviation Administration announced a temporary halt to U.S. flights into the Israeli capital. “Safety is the very first priority for DOT, for FAA,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said yesterday. The announcement coincided with suspended flights from Air France and Lufthansa, along with a warning from the European Aviation Safety Agency, which “strongly” recommended against flights into Tel Aviv.
Here in the U.S., many on the right responded to the news with the kind of maturity and restraint we’ve come to expect: “FAA Trutherism” was born. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in a move that was brazen even for him, accused the Obama administration of launching an “economic boycott on Israel.”
“When Secretary Kerry arrived in Cairo this week his first act was to announce $47 million in additional aid to Gaza, which is in effect $47 million for Hamas. In short order, this travel ban was announced by the FAA. Aiding Hamas while simultaneously isolating Israel does two things. One, it helps our enemy. Two, it hurts our ally.
“Until these serious questions are answered, the facts suggest that President Obama has just used a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign-policy demands. If so, Congress should demand answers.”
By any fair measure, Cruz’s response was more unhinged than his usual condemnations. The FAA’s security concerns, the far-right Texan said, are “punitive” and a possible attempt at “economic blackmail.” The senator raised the prospect of a presidential conspiracy, demanding information on “specific communications … between the FAA and the White House.”
Keep in mind, the Obama administration also asked Congress this week to “fast-track Israel’s request for an additional $225 million for the Iron Dome anti-missile system.” As Steve M. noted, the Obama administration and other Democrats “are seeking additional funding for Israel’s defense shield while Ted Cruz is alleging an economic boycott of Israel on Obama’s part.”
Cruz either hasn’t kept up on current events or he’s choosing not to see details that contradict his wild-eyed nonsense.
And the senator isn’t alone. Last night, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly told viewers the FAA was prohibiting domestic flights to Tel Aviv, but the FAA hadn’t imposed a similar policy over Ukraine. What Kelly claimed was wrong – the FAA has banned commercial travel over Ukraine since April.
This is what happens when the right gets a little too excited about bashing Obama – they lose sight of reality. The instinct to see presidential conspiracies lurking in every corner has passed the tipping point.
Let’s not brush past just how bizarre this whining really is. At its core, the complaint from Cruz and his allies is that the Obama administration is trying too hard to protect Americans traveling near war zones. If there were a deadly incident at the Tel Aviv airport involving a civilian U.S. passenger plane, it’s easy to imagine conservatives demanding to know why the FAA didn’t do more. This week, Republicans are instead complaining the FAA did too much.
This morning, however, Cruz received the news he wanted to hear: the FAA is now satisfied there are security measures in place and the travel ban is now over. The right can now move safely about the political landscape, looking for new “scandals” in need of conspiracy theories.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 24, 2014
“Conservative Victimhood”: Why The IRS Non-Scandal Perfectly Represents Today’s GOP
When John Boehner appointed South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy to chair a select committee on Benghazi, it was like a manager taking the ball from a struggling starting pitcher and calling in a reliever to see if he might be able to carry the team to victory. Except in this case, the starter being pummelled—Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight Committee—was still pitching in another couple of games, with no improvement in results. Listening to this NPR story yesterday about Issa’s continued inability to get where Republicans want to go with the IRS scandalette, it occurred to me that it really is an almost perfect expression of contemporary congressional Republicanism.
There’s the obsession with conservative victimhood, (For the record, not one of the nonprofit groups scrutinized by the IRS for possible political activity was constrained from doing anything by having its 501(c)(4) application delayed; a group whose application is pending can operate as freely one whose nonprofit status is already approved.) There’s the utter disinterest in governing or the actual operation of government, in favor of a fruitless quest for partisan advantage. There’s the obliviousness to facts. There’s the fervent belief that even if they can’t find any malfeasance it must surely be there somewhere waiting to be uncovered, because it’s Barack Obama we’re talking about here, and we just know in our guts that he must have done something horrible. Consider these recent remarks from Issa:
An interesting question that gets asked is, “Are we close to the bottom?” The bottom turns out to be here in Washington, Lois Lerner and people directly related to her clearly have been shown to abuse conservatives for their views. Now the question is can we get to the top. So far, Lois Lerner is as high as we’ve been able to substantiate, but we do certainly understand that the IRS commissioners knew or should have known about her activities and made trips to the White House. That’s a big part of where—we may never get those answers, but it certainly looks like Lois Lerner didn’t act alone.
I’m not sure exactly what he means “we’ve been able to substantiate” about Lois Lerner, but he’s sure that the conspiracy goes higher, even up to the top. The IRS commissioner “made trips to the White House,” for pete’s sake! But the fact that in 2014 Issa is still talking about this particular component of the story after it was thoroughly debunked—in actuality, the commissioner made a small number of trips to the White House to attend meetings about implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which involves the IRS verifying income data—demonstrates just how far Issa is from ever getting the goods on the Obama administration. “Lois Lerner didn’t act alone,” he says, not because he actually has any evidence of a conspiracy, but because, well, c’mon!
Which brings us to the final way in which the IRS scandal is a microcosm of this entire era of Republican buffoonery: the hapless bumbling, culminating in humiliating failure. They really thought this scandal had potential. After all, it involved the most hated agency in Washington, and it seemed like they were sure to find the smoking gun. But then they didn’t, and the scandal goes on only in the fevered imaginations that flourish within the conservative bubble. They’ll still be talking about it years from now.
Having failed to catch the Obama administration in an impeachable act, Republicans could at least have used the story to put forward some reforms that could make the IRS work better. They could have proposed clarifying the law on charitable groups, or providing extra training for IRS workers (who plainly found current law vague and confusing to implement, because it is), or any of a number of reforms to make sure nothing even remotely like this happens again. But they didn’t propose those things. What are they advocating instead? Cutting the IRS’ enforcement budget, so it’s easier for people (especially rich people who can employ tax avoidance schemes) to get away with not paying their taxes.
When the scandal didn’t turn out to be what they thought it was, they could have turned it into something productive for the country, and with relatively little effort. (Democrats would surely have gone along with any productive reforms.) But they didn’t bother. And there you have it.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 16, 2014
“Asked And Answered”: Hey, Benghazi-Heads, You Stand Down!
Let’s redirect our attention back to Benghazi. When is that special Benghazi committee in the House of Representatives going to get cracking, you may have wondered? Good question. It hasn’t been announced yet. But here’s a better question. What, now, is it going to investigate?
While we’ve all been focused during the past week on the border, there was a pretty major news development on Benghazi that got buried and is in need of a little sunshine. Last week, the Associated Press reported on transcripts of hours of closed-door interviews with nine U.S. military leaders that had been conducted by two House committees, Armed Services and Oversight (the latter is Darrell Issa’s committee). Those military leaders agreed on a, or maybe the, central point as far as this continuing “investigation” is concerned: There was no stand-down order.
The stand-down conspiracy has been a central right-wing talking point virtually since the tragic storming of the consulate, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The idea is that our heroic men and women in uniform could have saved the quartet, but President Obama and Hillary Clinton didn’t want them to, because they’re weak and they want America to fail.
Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz has been among the most vocal and direct Republicans on this point, saying last year: “We had proximity, we had capability, we had four individuals in Libya armed, ready to go, dressed, about to get into the car to go in the airport to go help their fellow countrymen who were dying and being killed and under attack in Benghazi, and they were told to stand down. That’s as sickening and depressing and disgusting as anything I have seen. That is not the American way.”
Issa has made similar comments. South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who will chair the special committee once it does get off the ground, has never been quite so matter-of-fact as Chaffetz, but he too has performed the stand-down Fox trot, in a slightly more glancing way back in early May. “Well, Greta, your viewers would still have the same unanswered questions as we have: why our security profile was so low on the anniversary of 9/11; why we didn’t have any assets moving during the siege itself; and why the government can’t be trusted to answer your questions completely and accurately in the aftermath,” he said. “The jury that I’m interested in are reasonable-minded, fair-minded people, like your viewers.” The key phrase there is “why we didn’t have any assets moving,” which means “military people dispatched.”
The transcripts show that that question was answered—back in March—behind closed doors by the two military officials responsible. The senior military officer who issued the “remain in place” order to troops based in Tripoli, 600 miles away, and the detachment officer who received the order both told the House it was the right decision. A four-member team that included the detachment leader, a medic, and two others was told to remain in Tripoli because the determination was made, according to the AP’s reporting on the transcripts, that there was simply no way the team could have reached Benghazi in time to make any difference. The mayhem had already taken place.
If and when these ridiculous hearings happen, I’d wager that you’re going to be hearing Republicans wailing about when the “remain in place” phone call was made. On that question, there is some dispute. It might have happened as early as 5:05 a.m., or it might have happened as late as 6:30 a.m. So that’s a pretty large time window during a crisis for the GOP to exploit. But remember as you hear all this: It doesn’t matter. The second attack at Benghazi happened around 5:30 a.m. and lasted 11 minutes. It takes 90 minutes to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi. So it was completely physically impossible for the team to get there, unless its members had the power to spin the world backward and reverse time, like Christopher Reeve did to bring Margot Kidder back to life.
The officer who gave the order concluded that given that reality, the team would be better off in Tripoli, where the embassy was being evacuated in the aftermath of the Benghazi consulate attack. Some three dozen Americans were being taken from the Tripoli embassy to a classified location outside the city. And lo and behold, the medic who stayed behind in Tripoli saved one American life during the evacuation, according to the report. So according to these officials, the United States suffered one less death because the “remain in place order was issued.
Remember, this testimony is old. March. It was given behind closed doors, so we didn’t know about it. But Darrell Issa, and one has to assume John Boehner, did know. And still Boehner empaneled this committee. Yes, I suppose there are other questions the committee can pursue. But the public-interest question is whether anything more could have feasibly been done to prevent those four deaths in Benghazi, and nine military leaders have said no, it couldn’t have. The other questions are just the usual political ones—can they find some flimsy basis for impeachment, and can they hurt Hillary Clinton. Our troops didn’t stand down then, but someone sure should now.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, July 14, 2014
“Borderline Behavior”: GOP Demands Action, Blocks Solutions — And Always Complains
Listening to Republicans in Washington (and Texas and Arizona) scream about the “crisis” of migrant children arriving from Central America on our southern border, it is puzzling to realize that they don’t actually want to do anything to solve the problem. Nor do these hysterical politicians – led by that down-home diva Rick Perry, the governor of Texas – want to let President Obama do anything either.
Except that they insist the president absolutely must visit the border, in person, preferably with a thousand members of the National Guard (who could join the Border Patrol and local police in accepting the children as they surrender). Strangely enough these Republicans, along with a few Texas Democrats, seem to believe that is the most important action Obama could undertake.
Understandably, the president is skeptical. “This isn’t theater,” he responded tartly. “This is a problem. I’m not interested in photo ops. I’m interested in solving a problem.” As he knows, this episode is only the latest in a long sequence of similar clown shows, with Republicans citing ridiculous reasons to delay or prevent government action. His irritation is fully justified.
But perhaps Obama should have gone down to the border anyway, stood in the blazing sunlight with the dim governor for as long as Perry wished – and allowed the television cameras to show that their presence had accomplished exactly nothing. Of course, if Obama showed up at the border, the Republicans assuredly would criticize him for wasting time on a photo op. They have become the party of perpetual whining.
When they aren’t bleating about Obama, they’re concocting weird theories about his secret plans to destroy America. Only last week, Perry coyly hinted – although he said he didn’t want to be “conspiratorial” — that the White House must be “in on” the border crossings, because migrant kids couldn’t have showed up en masse without “a highly coordinated effort.” Later, he tried to persuade CNN’s Kate Bolduan that he didn’t really mean what his idiotic words said – an explanation everyone has heard from him before.
While Perry has taken the lead, he isn’t the only elected official whose mouth spews absurdities on this subject. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) offered a policy approach that would please any simpleton, when he explained why the President’s request for $3.7 billion in emergency funding looks far too big to him. “I’ve gone online and have taken a look on Orbitz and taken a look at what does it cost to fly people to El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras. You have fares as low as $207. There’s nonstop flights at $450. You take those numbers and it costs somewhere between $11 million and $30 million to return people in a very humane fashion,” he opined.
Evidently nobody informed the Wisconsin senator about the myriad other costs involved in rounding up and caring for these terrified children, who are entitled to a court hearing and other consideration under an anti-trafficking law signed by George W. Bush. Anyone who wants to expedite their removal – a disturbingly inhumane and unnecessary policy – must first provide more courts, judges, and lawyers. And anyone who wants a decent policy, which includes action against the drug warlords who are threatening and killing these innocents, must be prepared to spend more than the cost of an Orbitz ticket.
Some Republicans, notably Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), are urging the president to include their pet projects in his spending bill, such as electronic verification requirements for employers and at border crossings. And many GOP lawmakers, having demanded action on the border issue from Obama, are equally adamant that the funding must be “offset” by cuts in other programs.
None of these geniuses appears to realize that all their barking and carping and mooning are frustrating the president’s attempt to address the “crisis” that is agitating them so fiercely. Or more likely they know exactly what they’re doing — and the point, as usual, is to embarrass Obama.
But not every Republican talks total nonsense about the border and immigration. Alfonso Aguilar, who headed the Office of Citizenship under Bush, recently wrote: “Contrary to the narrative of some opportunistic politicians and pundits, this unfortunate situation is not the result of the Obama administration failing to enforce the law. In reality, most would-be-migrants believe that crossing the border has become much more difficult, and in the last decade, the U.S. government has greatly strengthened border security and interior enforcement.”
Meanwhile, the majority of Americans is increasingly repulsed by the primitive nativism and partisan opportunism of Republican leaders on immigration. Democrats, independents, and even many rank-and-file Republicans want a more decent and constructive policy. Ultimately voters must grasp that the GOP is the greatest single obstacle to every vital reform. That day cannot come too soon.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, July 11, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 