Oliver Knox | Washington | August 20

AFP - Former U.S. homeland security chief Tom Ridge charges in a new book that top aides to then-president George W. Bush pressured him to raise the "terror alert" level to sway the November 2004 US election.

Then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and attorney general John Ashcroft pushed him to elevate the color-coded threat level, but Ridge refused, according to a summary from his publisher, Thomas Dunne Books.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," Ridge is quoting as writing in "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again."

JACQUES STEINBERG | Nov 16

NYT - When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago — claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a “60 Minutes” segment about President Bush’s National Guard service — the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as “old news.”

So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money.

Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including the power of subpoena and the threat of punishment against witnesses who lie under oath — he has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network.

Larisa Alexandrovna & Muriel Kane | Columbus, Ohio | September 29

Raw Story - A high-level Republican consultant has been subpoenaed in a case regarding alleged tampering with the 2004 election.

Michael L. Connell was served with a subpoena in Ohio on Sept. 22 in a case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations. Connell, president of GovTech Solutions and New Media Communications, is a website designer and IT professional who created a website for Ohio’s secretary of state that presented the results of the 2004 election in real time as they were tabulated.

At the time, Ohio’s Secretary of State, Kenneth J. Blackwell, was also chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection effort in Ohio.

The majority of the people in America today have basically said yes to corporate ownership of the government. The majority of Americans seem to have decided to let the corporate media do their thinking for them. Welcome to the information age in overdrive. You may not get the correct information… but you will get lots of it. The task is to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The blame cannot be shifted solely onto the shoulders of our political leaders. The American people cannot claim that they were “misled” by their leaders and don’t know the truth. While they were indeed misled, the truth wasn’t long behind the lies. Whether it its the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, the food crisis, the loss of our civil liberties or the sinking of our economy, the American people have been informed and apprised of everything. We know who the people behind the curtain are. We know how they did the things that they did. There are no great secrets that the American people don’t have access to. Everything is in plain sight.

Ohio citizen sending a message right after 2004 election Image

"Letters from the Edge" Part 2

Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, DC (Part 1)

April, 2007. Columbus, Ohio. 56 of 88 Ohio counties defied a federal court order and failed to return some or all of the 2004 presidential ballots that they were ordered to retain indefinitely. Over 1.5 million ballots were destroyed or lost, key evidence for major federal law suit charging election fraud and voter suppression in the 2004 presidential contest. For example: "fraudulent votes … cast for George W. Bush; inflating of vote tabulations in areas that tended to vote for George Bush."

Letter from an Ohio Board of Elections (Holmes County) on missing 2004 ballots.

“Letters from the Edge” - Part 1

Steven Rosenfeld, | July 30

AlterNet - In 56 of Ohio's 88 counties, ballots and election records from 2004 have been "accidentally" destroyed, despite a federal order to preserve them -- it was crucial evidence which would have revealed whether the election was stolen.

Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.

The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus.

Greg Gordon | June 25

McClatchy - Critics say top Justice official's '04 letter to Ohio judge was a partisan maneuver.

Four days before the 2004 election, the Justice Department's civil rights chief sent an unusual letter to a federal judge in Ohio who was weighing whether to let Republicans challenge the credentials of 23,000 mostly African American voters.

The case was triggered by allegations that Republicans had sent a mass mailing to mostly Democratic-leaning minorities and used undeliverable letters to compile a list of voters potentially vulnerable to eligibility challenges.

In his letter to U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Cincinnati, Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta argued that it would undermine the enforcement of state and federal election laws if citizens could not challenge voters' credentials.

h/t Think Progress

. . . how incestuous DC really is, like a holiday weekend in Arkansas or something it's so bad.

Bruce Finley | Denver | March 2

Denver Post - White House staffers directed two men serving as bouncers at a 2005 Denver appearance by President Bush to eject three activists from the public event, the bouncers said under oath today.

It was the first time in the long-running controversy over the barring of the so-called "Denver Three" from the Bush event that specific White House officials have been named as having been involved in the ejection.

The paid White House staff members were identified in sworn depositions as Jamie O'Keefe, who was lead advance staffer for the appearance, and Steve Atkiss, White House trip director, attorneys said after the depositions today in federal court in Denver.

M.R. KROPKO | Cleveland | January 24

AP - Two election workers in the state's most populous county were convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.

A third employee who had been charged was acquitted on all counts.

Jacqueline Maiden, the elections' coordinator who was the board's third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee.

Maiden and Dreamer also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty. Both were acquitted of five other charges.

Washington | April 10

Associated Press - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

Barton Gellman & Daffna Linser | April 9

WP - As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C.

Thomas B. Edsall | March 6

Washington Post - The surging number of campaign contributors in 2004, especially the small donors who gave online, changed the character of one of the most important constituencies in U.S. politics, the people who finance presidential elections. This key group has become more reflective of the middle class, has a higher percentage of women and is far more willing to contribute without being directly solicited.

The new small donors, who played a much bigger role in 2004 than in the past, are polarized on ideological, cultural and economic issues in much the same way that large givers are, according to a survey by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University of all donors, both those using the Internet and those who did not.

Mark Crispin Miller | July 24

Harper's Magazine via FreePress.org - (summarized by Mary Anne Saucier). While commentators, prompted by Republicans, claimed Bush won the 2004 election through the votes of a silent majority concerned with "family values," Mark Crispin Miller writes that when voters were asked to state, "in their own words the most important factor in their vote,"only 14 percent named "moral values." He details how the press (except for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC) ignored "the strange details of the election--except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them...It was as if they were reporting from inside a forest fire without acknowledging the fire, except to keep insisting that there was no fire."

Georg Mascolo | June 27 | Berlin

Der Spiegel - Want to become a US ambassador? It's not as hard as you may think. Just donate a couple of hundred thousand to President George W. Bush's campaign coffers and pick your city. The president's new cadre of diplomats tend to be generous campaign donors, including the wealthy Ohio ball-bearing manufacture who is expected to run the US Embassy in Berlin.

Seattle | June 28

AP - The Washington state Republican Party paid Democrats $15,000 to cover court costs in the GOP's unsuccessful challenge to the election of Gov. Christine O. Gregoire.

Officials said the check was cut Friday as Chelan County Superior Court Judge E. Bridges signed a final order to dismiss the Republican challenge, affirming a ruling he issued June 6 that upheld the election results.

Eric Boehlert | Seattle | May 25

Salon.com - Republican efforts in Washington state to sue their way into the governor's mansion took a legal hit Tuesday when a judge ruled Republicans would have to find another allegation besides voter fraud if they wanted the 2004 election results overturned.

Columbus, OH | May 20

AP - Ending one of the last fights from the contentious 2004 presidential campaign, Ohio's top judge declined Thursday to punish four lawyers who had challenged the results in court.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled against Ohio Atty. Gen. Jim Petro's attempt to have the lawyers sanctioned for filing a "meritless claim" against the vote that gave President Bush a win in Ohio and, as a result, enough electoral votes to win a second term in the White House.

Washington | May 9

CNN - A conservative watchdog group with a history of dogging the Clintons urged a Senate panel on Monday to investigate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton over a Hollywood fundraiser for which a former staffer faces charges.

Mark Z. Barabak | April 4

LA Times - The permanent campaign -- a never-ending cycle of fundraising, polling and candidate positioning -- has been a growing part of American politics for a generation, even before the term was popularized in a 1980 book of that title by journalist Sidney Blumenthal.

But those immersed in the election system -- candidates, fundraisers, campaign consultants, issue advocates -- say that in just the past few years the pace has grown even more relentless, to a point where the notion of a political "off-season" seems every bit as quaint as straw boaters and torchlight parades.

Christopher Hitchens | February

VF.com - If it were not for Kenyon College, I might have missed, or skipped, the whole controversy. The place is a visiting lecturer's dream, or the ideal of a campus-movie director in search of a setting. It is situated in wooded Ohio hills, in the small town of Gambier, about an hour's drive from Columbus. Its literary magazine, The Kenyon Review, was founded by John Crowe Ransom in 1939. Its alumni include Paul Newman, E. L. Doctorow, Jonathan Winters, Robert Lowell, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and President Rutherford B. Hayes. The college's origins are Episcopalian, its students well mannered and well off and predominantly white, but it is by no means Bush-Cheney territory. Arriving to speak there a few days after the presidential election, I found that the place was still buzzing. Here's what happened in Gambier, Ohio, on decision day 2004.

Read the rest at the link. Well worth it.

And a shout-out to BillJPA for the heads-up!

David Lindoff | February

FAIR -  In the weeks leading up to the November 2 election, the New York Times was abuzz with excitement. Besides the election itself, the paper's reporters were hard at work on two hot investigative projects, each of which could have a major impact on the outcome of the tight presidential race. . .

On Thursday, just three days after that first exposé, the paper was set to run a second, perhaps more explosive piece, exposing how George W. Bush had worn an electronic cueing device in his ear and probably cheated during the presidential debates.

More at the link

And they say bloggers have no credibility. Bleh.

Melanthia Mitchell | Seattle | January 23

AP - The state's Republicans, still pressing their court challenge to the disputed governor's election, have filed a separate challenge with the state Legislature.

"We did this to cover all our bases," said Mary Lane, a spokeswoman for Dino Rossi, the Republican who narrowly won the original vote count and a mandatory recount. In a hand recount, he lost to Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes out of 2.9 million cast.

Gregoire was sworn into office Jan. 12.

Neil Modie | Wenatchee | January 21

Seattle Times-Intelligencer - A judge refused yesterday to speed up the gathering of evidence in the Republicans' legal challenge to the governor's election, ensuring that Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire won't face a revote quickly, if ever.

Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges denied the request for "expedited discovery" of a huge volume of election records, other data and testimony from state and local election officials, remarking "it would be irresponsible to throw everyone into what I perceive to be expedited chaos."

But the judge also turned down a state Democratic Party request to halt discovery altogether until he rules on the Democrats' argument that he lacks jurisdiction in the case.