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The GOP ‘voter fraud epidemic’ continues…

What do GOP superstar Ann Coulter, the head of the GOP’s California voter registration firm Mark Anthony Jacoby, and, as of yesterday, Indiana’s newly elected GOP Secretary of State Charlie White all have in common? Unlike the four-decade old community organization ACORN, each of the Republicans appear to have committed voter fraud and/or voter registration fraud.

Coulter’s well-documented acts of voter fraud and voter registration fraud took place in 2005 in Palm Beach County, FL, and were preceded by likely acts ofvoter fraud in Connecticut in 2002 and 2004 as well. Jacoby’s voter registration fraud in CA led to his 2008 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. And now White, the new chief election official in IN, the state with one of the most draconian voter suppression polling-place Photo ID restriction laws in the nation, has been charged with three counts of voter fraud (as well as additional counts of perjury, financial institution fraud, and theft), just two months after being sworn in last January, for having lied about his address when he voted in last year’s GOP primary…

According to the Indianapolis Star…

The state’s top election official will face seven felony counts, including voter fraud, perjury and theft, a special prosecutor said today. 

Secretary of State Charlie White was accused of intentionally voting in the wrong precinct during the May 2010 primary, a potential felony.

White turned himself in at the Hamilton County Jail Thursday afternoon and was released after posting $10,000 bond.

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White has admitted to voting in a district where he no longer lived.

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EVEN THE GOVERNOR THINKS HE SHOULD STEP ASIDE – PENDING THE INVESTIGATION —

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In a statement released yesterday, Republican Governor Mitch Daniels said: “It would be neither credible nor appropriate for the state’s top elections official to continue to perform his duties while contesting criminal charges, some of them under the very laws the secretary of state implements.”

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The Chief Election Official in the State of Indiana is an absolute scofflaw on the very legitimacy of his OWN voting behavior!

PETE/MARIN

Congress acted then to end the Total Information Awareness program. So what did the Bush Administration do? They just gave it a new name, and moved it to the National Security Agency, and thus was born the program to seize information and spy without a search warrant.

New revelations by former NSA employee Russell Tice confirm earlier reports by a former employee of AT&T: The NSA was gathering ALL electronic communications into a gigantic computer database, using the Patriot Act as a justification. That electronic spying dragnet was further justified by the passage of the FISA Amendments Act.

Your telephone calls, your emails, your text messages, your credit card use, your Internet habits are all being watched by the government. Secret physical searches of homes and offices without a search warrant are also allowed under the FISA Amendments Act. Big Brother is here. Total Information Awareness is alive.

The funny thing that very few people have bothered to mention is that this search and seizure of Americans’ persons and papers is completely unconstitutional. Read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Warrants are absolutely required for government searches and seizures, and the government has to be specific in applying for warrants about exactly who and where it wants the searches and seizures to apply to. The new Total Information Awareness program gives no such specification – it searches the electronic communications of the entire United States of America!

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that this is just a problem of the past, and that with the Bush Administration gone, the problem is solved. No, as a senator, Barack Obama voted to approve the FISA Amendments Act, and as President he is administering the program without acting to end the warrantless electronic spying at all. Barack Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, confirms that the Obama Administration’s intention is to keep the NSA Total Information Awareness program in place.

If you care about freedom, you need to act now to put pressure on Barack Obama to change course, and to put an end to the Big Brother NSA spying program being used against the American people.

Is that acceptable to you? If not, consider that our next President, Barack Obama, not only voted for the FISA Amendments Act, but declared his intention to employ it as President.

Do you believe dissent is the highest form of Patriotism unless the object of dissent is a Democrat?
Do you believe that an administration must adhere to the Constitution or pay political costs… so long as the administration is a Republican one?

Or do you believe the United States Constitution applies in all seasons? Do you advocate all presidents, Democratic or Republican, should be held to account for their policy decisions?

If you find yourself in the latter camp, then please join us on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC. We have secured a permit for a spot on Pennsylvania Avenue. Our purpose: to courteously, quietly but pointedly stand along the route, holding signs that ask our new president Barack Obama, as he passes us by on Pennsylvania Avenue, to fulfill his Oath of Office “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Here are the details, from the Inauguration demonstration web page:

President Barack Obama:
Fulfill Your Oath
Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution

Pro-Constitution Demonstration in Washington, DC
Outside the Department of Justice
SW Corner of Pennsylvania and 9th
on the Inauguration Parade Route

January 20, 2009 (presence maintained through the day until the end of the Inaugural Parade)

Support the Constitution by exercising it! Exercise your First Amendment freedom to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievance. Ask President Barack Obama to keep his Oath of Office to “Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Demonstration web page:
http://irregulartimes.com/dcoathofofficedemo.html

Will you carry your principled activism into the Obama Era? Will you be there?

Will you spread the word?

Well, heck, regardless of who is elected on November 4, you’ll have a FISA Amendments Act supporter in the White House. The organization Columbus for Peace has announced a November 5, 2008 protest at the State Capitol Building at the corner of Broad Street and High Street in Columbus, Ohio — no matter who wins the presidency. If you live in Ohio, meet there at 10 AM.

If you don’t live in Ohio, organize something similar in your neck of the woods. It’s not just time to vote. It’s time to agitate for a better world.

But there is a more fundamental basis for us to fear the choice of Evan Bayh as Vice President — the Senator has emerged in active opposition to the fundamental basis for the organization of our political system, the U.S. Constitution. Last year, Evan Bayh voted for the Protect America Act, a bill which temporarily permitted the U.S. government to spy on its citizens and search their communications without the judicial warrant that the Fourth Amendment so clearly requires. This year, Evan Bayh cheerily voted for the FISA Amendments Act, its four-year extension.

By supporting the FISA Amendments Act, Barack Obama’s turned from someone who supported the Constitution in speeches into someone who undermined the Constitution in his actions. The selection of Evan Bayh by Barack Obama as his running mate would reiterate Barack Obama’s turn to the autocratic side of politics. That would be a deeply disturbing signal to me, and I hope it does not come to pass.

The wind is blowing too hard in Washington. That’s why.

According to a police investigator’s report, the shooter

“stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of the major media outlets.”

Can’t little kids perform “Annie” in America without having someone shoot up the performance?  Where was homeland security?  Must we now depend on Unitarians to protect us with their bare hands?

We have given up all our rights under the fourth amendment for this idiotic FISA Amendments Act.  Now where is our safety?

Think of it as a constant, low drumbeat of pressure. Keep it up for long enough, and it may have an effect.

One member of Congress who ought to be held in special contempt by his Democratic constituents is Mike Arcuri, who has the seat in the House of Representatives for the 24th District in upstate New York.

Michael Arcuri not only voted in favor of George W. Bush’s program of government spying against Americans – he led the effort to shove the FISA Amendments Act through the House of Representatives just 24 hours after the text of the bill was made available, before most members of Congress had the chance to read it, and with just one hour of debate. Thanks to Arcuri, opponents of the legislation had less than ten minutes – total – to express their concerns with the law.

Given that the FISA Amendments Act attacks the Constitution of the United States of America, wrecking the fourth amendment and the system of checks and balances, and blatantly disobeying the prohibition on ex post facto laws, having less than 10 minutes to express objections was not enough. It was a move to willfully preserve ignorance, and Congressman Arcuri made it possible.

Let me be brief, then, and offer some advice from Frederick Douglass about what citizens must do to preserve their freedom. Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”

At Irregular Times, we’re persisting in writing about the danger American democracy is now vulnerable to under the FISA Amendments Act, though we have to acknowledge that the popular political mood is to try to just forget about the constitutional crisis and pretend that nothing happened.

Just yesterday, we started up an online hub for information about the FISA Amendments Act. Every day, bit by bit, we need to keep on creating the materials out of which a sustained movement against the FISA Amendments Act can be constructed.

Remember what Frederick Douglass said: Endurance is the key.

Let’s keep it going.