Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press:
Barack Obama’s legal team wants a special prosecutor to determine whether partisan politics is at play in a reported though unconfirmed Justice Department investigation of a voter registration effort which has been the target of numerous complaints of late, including one in Michigan.
With the election just over two weeks away, Bob Bauer, Obama’s chief lawyer, said in a conference call with reporters this afternoon that he is asking U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to to hand over to special prosecutor Nora Dannehy any probe into what Bauer called “bogus claims of vote fraud†that mirror concerns raised by Republicans two years ago.
According to a recent Justice Department report, those issues played a role in the controversy over the forced resignations of nine former federal prosecutors.
Bob Bauer was just on Olbermann’s program saying that there was an appearance of collusion between the McCain campaign and the White House. The Justice Department is engaged in “investigations” to bolster the McCain campaign’s claim that ACORN is destroying democracy as we know it.
Update: More details at Bloomberg.
It’s actually this whole smear campaign against ACORN that is destroying the fabric of democracy. Among its effects, I think intentionally, is to provide a pretext for denying the legitimacy of an elected government under Obama.
Right now, they are laying the groundwork for years of claims that Obama “stole” the election. This will simultaneously achieve their long-term goal of undermining the people’s belief in the value of government and feed their need to feel persecuted and abused by their nemesis, the Liberals.
It’s good to see the Obama campaign stepping up to call foul and fight this BS.
I will tell you from my own experience of five years in Chicagoland while I was an undergraduate and a grad student at Northwestern, The Chicago Tribune has NEVER endorsed a Democrat (not even Illinois’ own former Governor, Adlai Stevenson, in the 50s)… until TODAY!
The Chicago Tribune has endorsed Barack Obama.
This was the Republicans’ own paper, originating in support for Lincoln in the 19th Century. But here is what came out today:
But what about McCain, the candidate the Trib endorsed in the primaries?
This about sums it up:
Chicago’s other daily, The Sun-Times, also endorsed Obama, and I guess this is the first time that both Chicago papers came out for the same candidate.
This is something for my son, who has lived in Chicago for the past two years until he moved to West Virginia this month with his Mother and me, to comment on… as soon as he gets back from his workout I’ll be curious to get his response. I bet it will be as amazed as mine.
Under The LobsterScope
If you read history much you can see that many empires and countries fell because of infighting within the government. The sides were so concerned about the petty grasp for power that they could not come together to deal with real problems that their empires/countries faced. I believe the Republicans would rather see the country go down the tubes than see a Democratic president, especially a black one, get some credit for saving us from the precipice. The Republicans will not accept that they have lost, and will make governing for four years hell on earth. They will claim that we did the same with Bush, but in fact our elected officials did not. Their elected officials the last two years in the Senate have simply obstructed any type of meaningful legislation simply to make sure that we cannot get credit for ANYTHING. My only hope is that they lose, become even more conservative and become completely unpalatable to the general, “undecided”, voting public. Maybe then another conservative party will grow that our country could at least work with. If not, lord have mercy on all of us.
The GOP has put their party and their interests first. Country first my ass.
Hopefully Republicans have overplayed their “voter fraud” card and their games finally get exposed. I’m nervous that Team Obama waited so long, but then ACORN wasn’t really part of the public picture until recently. “Voter fraud” is a great smokescreen for the usual Republican election rigging. They’ve been hollering this phony BS for years.
Dontcha just love a party who knows that they only way they can win is to disenfranchise voters? These people are scum.
Good!
This whole anti-ACORN campaign is a fraud to try and suppress new voters from taking part in our democracy. This exact same phony campaign was what resulted in the US Attorney scandal and Atty Gen. Gonzales resignation and its been pulled out of the dirty tricks closet for one more try.
Further, the percentage of bad forms turned in by ACORN is almost exactly the same as the number of phony signatures turned in by the GOP when they recalled Democratic Governor Grey Davis in California. It is an inevitable by-product of low paid or volunteer signature gatherers and under intense investigation does not result in fraudulent votes being cast
If only the ‘drink the punch’ right wing extremists would take a few minutes to look at the glass they’re being handed… they might just see the flies floating in it. Has a single one of them sought out the ACORN website before re-spewing the hate they’ve heard? The day I did this was the headline:
ACORN to McCain: Have You Lost That Loving Feeling?
October 13, 2008
Senator Allied with ACORN as Recently as 2006, Now Turns Cold Shoulder (full story: http://acorn.org/index.php?id=12386).
What was that about guilt by association Senator???
If the conservative media like Fox News and Limbaugh and O’Reilly were truly right and forthright, they would welcome ~ nay ~ challenge their audience to see for themselves. Education is their worst enemy so I’ve made it my mission to counter every unfounded regurgitated comment I’ve seen with a link to additional information that will allow people to make informed decisions. What scares me is, no matter how much I do, it’s still just a drop in the bucket.
The Right sees itself losing power, and they are acting much like a cornered animal, as one commenter noted this week. That makes them that much more dangerous. I look for continued obstruction and unwillingness to cooperate as the Right takes refuge in voter fraud theories and attempts to explain away its losses at the polls.