I couldn't leave without noting that the Bush penchant for election-rigging got even more obvious this week. The NYT editorial board took him to task today, and the substance of what he's trying to pull won't be news to long-time readers.
The White House is removing a member of the Federal Election Commission for standing up for clean elections, while trying to install another member whose specialty is keeping eligible voters from casting ballots. The Senate, which must confirm nominees, should insist that President Bush appoint commissioners with a proven record of supporting voting rights and fair elections.
Yes, they should. But they won't. I'll leave you to guess why.
Bush is president only because, leave us never forget, he stole both presidential elections. The dirty tricks played by GOP operatives under Karl Rove (will Karl apologize for his evil on his deathbed, too, a la Lee Atwater, long after the damage has been done? who cares?) were wide-spread and mean-spirited, as befits the party and the man they were in aid of. Katherine Harris (who will be back to chicken-dancing for hire any day now) purged the Florida voter rolls of blacks, Ken Blackwell (a black man himself, so the rumor goes) played shuffleboard with black voting places and dumped carloads of black (Democratic, natch) ballots in landfills from Cleveland to Toledo, and Saxby Chambliss had electronic help turning Democratic votes into GOP ones. So this is, I suppose, relatively minor if typical:
Mr. Bush is purging the current F.E.C. chairman, David Mason, presumably because he was responsible enough to challenge the funding machinations of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. Mr. Mason shocked his fellow Republicans by notifying Mr. McCain that he might run afoul of the law by switching from public funding to private donations once he secured the party’s nomination.
The White House proposes to replace Mr. Mason with Donald McGahn, a Republican warhorse. F.E.C. commissioners are expected to be aligned with a party — one of the new Democratic nominees is a staff member of Senator Charles Schumer of New York — but Mr. McGahn has a particularly partisan background. He was the party’s Congressional campaign counsel — and the ethics lawyer for Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader from Texas who left office under multiple clouds.
(emphasis added)
I mean, in the Bush presidency the Federal Elections Commission has been a joke anyway. Of the six members, two have resigned and the other two Bush didn't bother to replace when their terms were up. There are only two members left, which makes the FEC, as the NYT puts it, "inoperable". If Mason is chugged under the collapsing Bush dam for the heinous crime of daring to charge a Republican with campaign financing shenanigans - which is, as we all know, the right of GOP candidates everywhere - and replaces him with this...hack...the FEC won't be a joke but a travesty of a disaster of a catastrophe of a joke.
Bush will have what he wants: an FEC that will turn a blind ideological eye to massive GOP vote fraud and attack the Democrats for non-existant voter fraud. If McCain can't win the election on his own hook - and it's perfectly obvious he can't - then maybe Bush's FEC can make sure Pub Ops can steal it for him.
Unrelated But Interesting
Thomas Nephew has The Picture The Media Doesn't Want You to See.
fafnir explains how Iraq and the GWOT qualify as emergencies.
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