United States Attorney Announces Procedures to Handle Election Fraud and Voting Rights Abuses

[font size=5]United States Attorney Announces Procedures to Handle Election Fraud and Voting Rights Abuses[/font]

United States Attorney Jerry E. Martin announced today that in conjunction with the Department of Justice’s on-going Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative, Assistant United States Attorneys and FBI agents will be available to handle complaints of election fraud and voter rights abuses.

“Every citizen must be able to vote without interference or discrimination and must enjoy the assurance that their vote will be counted,” said U.S. Attorney Martin. “The effectiveness of our Election Day Program depends in large part on the watchfulness and cooperation of the American electorate. It is imperative that those who have specific information about discrimination or election fraud make that information available immediately to the U.S. Attorney’s Office or the FBI. The U.S. Attorney’s Office will act promptly and aggressively to protect the integrity of the election process.”

The Department’s long-standing Election Day Program is intended to ensure public confidence in the integrity of the election process by providing local points of contact within the Justice Department where the public can report possible election fraud and voting rights violations while the polls are open on election day.

Asst. United States Attorneys Steve Jordan and Blanche Cook will be available while the polls are open on August 2, 2012, to receive and handle complaints of election fraud and voting rights abuses in consultation with Justice Department Headquarters in Washington. They can be reached at the following numbers: AUSA Jordan-615-736-2083; AUSA Cook-615-736-5431.

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A comment of mine re. "What's Wrong with Pennsylvania" on the NY Times site...

Below is the text of a comment I posted to an article published on Sunday in The New York Times titled, "What's Wrong with Pennsylvania?". I guess I struck a chord: 400 recommendations and top billing in the Editor's Picks!

I grew up in north central Pennsylvania (Clinton County), and still have many family and friends who live there. I can tell you there is yet something else that ultimately works against Republicans, and, by extension, Romney, in the state. That is, the extreme identification of the GOP with hardline, evangelical fundamentalists and their social agenda. Pennsylvania is certainly not the most socially liberal state in the union, but neither is it the most conservative. Candidates (or parties) who seek to promote a theocratic agenda may achieve a degree of electoral success for a time, but PA voters, as a whole, are generally uneasy with religious zealots. Former Senator Rick Santorum is a prime example of this.

Sept. 24, 2012 at 3:04 a.m.

The part they left out of Ann's "Stop it, this is hard" quote . . .

"Stop it. This is hard. You have no idea how difficult it is keeping track of what my husband says from one audience to the next!"

There is an interesting attempt at damage control emerging from Romney supporters . . .

. It says, in effect, that Romney's comments on the now infamous video do not represent his "real" views, but were mere pandering to a group of wealthy donors in order to secure their patronage.

So, in order to counter the perception that Romney is a cynical, craven man who will shamelessly lie to certain groups of voters in order to secure their vote and thus win an election, they are present him as a cynical, craven man who will shamelessly lie to certain groups of voters in order to secure their cash and thus win an election.

Do they think that helps his cause? LOL!

So Mittens allows as how his comments were "not elegantly stated, but . . .

. . . doesn't retreat an inch from the content of those comments.

It is surely emblematic of just how clueless the man is that he would think the objections to his comments were primarily stylistic ones. The problem, Mittens, is not how you said it that was the problem -- it was WHAT YOU SAID!

Question concerning policies in state-run drug rehab programs

A friend of mine who has struggled for years with meth addiction came to me recently and anniounced he wants to get clean. This is something he has needed to do for a long time, and I am pleased that he now seems ready and willing to try to tackle this particular demon. But he is coming up against a stumbling block in the last place one would expect: in the policies of drug treatment facilities. Let me explain...

My friend is unemployed and is on Medicaid, so his options are pretty much limited to using one of the state-run (NY) facilities. He is also a heavy smoker. Now, here's the thing: it turns out that New York has a statewide policy in its drug treatement facilities that requires complete abstinence from smoking in addition to the obvious requirement of abstaining from the addictive substance for which he is seeking treatment. (Note: many private-run facilities do not impose this requirement.) He confided in me that while he feels like he is finally ready to try to tackle his meth addiction, and while smoking is also something he eventually wants to kick, he fears he is nowhere near strong enough, emotionally or psychologically, to address both addictions at the same time.

I am not, and have never been a smoker. But I did observe my mother's decades-long struggle to quit smoking. By the time she was in her early 60s, she did finally manage to quit; alas, it was not soon enough to prevent her from developing the lung cancer that took her life at age 69. So I do have some understanding of how beastly difficult it can be to overcome nicotine addiction. I have to say I'm kind of surprised to hear about these policies. I mean, in a perfect world, nobody would ever be addicted to anything,so multiple addictions wouldn't be such a problem. But in the real world, people are often addicted to multiple substances. Both meth and nicotine addictions have serious health ramifications, but I think few would disagree that tackling the meth addiction is more imminently critical than kicking smoking. So, I guess my question is, why would the state impose such a policy, that seems, almost by design, to set people up for failure? Without in any way minimizing the importance of quitting smoking, when dealing with people with two addictions where both are harmful to one's health, but one of which presents a more immediate threat and is illegal to boot, why on earth would they institute a policy that simply puts yet one more hurdle in the already difficult challenge of treating the addiction to the illegal, and arguably more imminently harmful, substance? That simply makes no sense to me. Does anybody have any insight to offer on this?

Saw this comment about Romney's Libya remarks on another site ...

...

"Romney's campaign is so dead he'll soon be baptizing it."

I would count that as a sixth generation . . .

. . . since all of Mitt's sons are old enough to have served.

Just read something truly remarkable about the Romney family ...

... if indeed it is true. In a comment on Andrew Rosenthal's Editor's Blog in The New York Times, someone pointed out that there has not been a single military veteran in five generations of Romneys (here's a link to the comment: http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/republican-turf/?comments#permid=18 ). How many American families have not had a a son, brother, father, uncle, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc., who has served? If this claim is, indeed, true, it would appear the Romney family has some explaining to do.

The NYPD does it again -- do we all feel safer now?

Ray Kelly is saying the officer's gun went off "accidentally."