The Progessive Blog Alliance has grown so fast that a lot of us don't know each other's blogs very well. As a way to remedy that, somebody (I don't remember who it was, I'm sorry) suggested we each make one of them our Blog-of-the-Week to call attention to a good blog that might get overlooked in the shuffle. I was going to pick myself first (naturally) but then on second thought figured it was probably a good idea to overlook me if you're short on spare time, so I picked somebody I think it's a bad idea to overlook any time.

I've watched Karlo's Swerve Left go in the last, oh, 6-8 months, from a sketchy, sometime blog where he seemed to be spending most of his time figuring out what he wanted to do with it, to a focused, steady, interestingly-written blog that took a slightly different view of all the standard stuff every other blog was covering, to what it is today: a Must-Read-Daily filled with brilliant analysis, cutting if understated satire, trenchant commentary, and links you won't find anywhere else. It's been an absolute gas to watch this development take place. It isn't often you get to see a first-rate talent grow right before your very eyes.

It is therefore an honor to present to Karlo of Swerve Left the Alley's First 'Awesome Blog of the Week Award'.



Check him out. By next week, you'll be reading him every day.

You have to see this. It will take a while to download, but stick with it. It's worth it, believe me.

(Via, of course, Julie Beth)

Some short notes early in the morning:

# Julie Beth (ill-sorted ephemera) who called my attention to the eSlate problem, has already voted in her home town, Austin TX (what is it with all these Austin blogs? do they have a club or something? and they're all lefties, too--something in the water, perhaps), and reports no problem with her Kerry vote. She adds that that may have been because she didn't vote a straight ticket. There was quite a crowd and she was there quite a while.

i was just in line for TWO HOURS to vote in northern travis county...but damn, it felt good. was standing in line with the *nicest* proud-wife-of-a-promise-keeper republican woman. we had a pretty cool conversation, actually, bemoaning the closeness of the last presidential race that had FLA scrambling for a president for weeks after the election, both of us hoping that woudln't happen again. she talked a little bit about how unhappy about the 'gay agenda' she is, and how that's one reason she woudln't no-way, no-how, vote for kerry. which was kinda odd, considering she was white and her husband black, and if the masses had had their way way-back-when, she wouldn't ever have gotten to marry the ultra-friendly fella. but ya know. i didn't preach.

A lot of them are very nice, one-on-one, Julie Beth; it's when they gather into a mob that you gotta watch your ass.

# Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are going to be covering the election live starting at 10p EST, and for the first time in almost 15 years I am truly bummed that I don't have a tv. I'll probably be at work, anyway, but still.

# I know we've all been consumed by the attempt to elect the Junior Demon to the presidency by hook or--preferably--crook, but once the madness settles into Rove's perpetual legal challenges to Kerry's win, you really ought to make some time to visit eRobin at Fact-esque, who in addition to doing her usual superb job of burning the feet off the bizzarro NYT spin-meisters has put together a brilliant series on the recent draft report of the US Commission on Civil Rights. Not to be missed. The final report is being held back until after the election but there's plenty in the draft report that should be of concern, and Rob's pungent, spot-on commentary doesn't miss any of it. For instance, in a discussion of the BA's immigration policy, she notes:

[T]he report mentions the outrage of community leaders regarding Ashcroft's policy of linking Haitian immigrants to terrorist activities via "unsubstantiated and highly dubious allegations." (Well, that's not fair; those are the only kinds of allegations that Ashcroft's got.)

There are links at the bottom of each post to all the others, so you can catch up on whatever you missed while you were lost in a fog of outrage over another stolen election.

# David Scott Anderson (In Search of Utopia) has been doing heroic work on right-wing blogs, trying to bring The Word to Benighted Souls adrift in Bush/Cheney LaLaLand (or LieLieLand, as we like to call it in the Alley), particularly concentrating on trying to get them to respond to the 19th century tricks the GOP has dragged out of the closet to suppress minority votes (which they deny is happening, of course--it's all a trick of the 'liberal media'). First he points to a Must-Read column at WaPo by Courtland Milloy:

George W. Bush had been named president with the help of a U.S. Supreme Court that his father, former president George H.W. Bush, helped to shape. In the aftermath of 9/11, the selected one took the nation to war -- citing first one reason, then changing to another and still another before coming up with the latest one: to show the world the wonders of democracy.

One certainly has to wonder about the model on display.

"For example, in recent days, Wisconsin Republicans have announced plans to initiate 'background' checks on newly registered voters," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, at a news conference Thursday in front of the Republican National Committee's headquarters in Washington. "This is an intimidation technique, designed to induce fear on the part of newly registered voters, particularly in minority communities."

The situation is just as bad in other battleground states, such as Florida, Ohio and Colorado.

After the LCCR news conference, two Republican National Committee staff members -- both young African Americans -- were sent out to issue a rebuttal. Their efforts got off to a bad start, however, when one of them made what might be called a Freudian slip by introducing the other as "director of voter suppression." The spokesmen tried to recover, contending that their party poll-watchers were only going to weed out ineligible voters; not intimidate others.

As an example, one of them cited registered voters whose addresses had been tracked back to hotels and vacant lots. A woman in a wheelchair shot back, saying she lives in a single-occupancy hotel room and that many homeless people do, too, as well as in church basements and vacant lots.

"Since when does being poor mean losing your right to vote?" she asked.

Even the young Republicans had to wonder about that.

Milloy thinks that on the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the 40th anniversary of the deaths of Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney, we ought to be celebrating progress, not bemoaning regress.

I'd imagined that this would be a time for honoring our martyrs and celebrating the progress they helped bring about. Instead, I have been awakened to the reality of a backward drift into a century gone by, when suppressing the black vote was all the rage.

Republicans appear to be back to their notorious black-voter intimidation tactics, which were exposed and condemned by the courts in the 1980s. Meanwhile, the IRS is threatening to revoke the NAACP's tax-exempt status and has targeted the nation's oldest civil rights organization for an audit for criticizing Bush administration policies.

David wants to know when the otherwise intelligent right-wingers he debates with are going to get around to acknowledging the obvious.

[M]y question is a simple one... When do my friends on the right stop pooh poohing this and express some outrage. When do they stop calling ridiculously for proof, and start asking questions of their own leadership.

When do they suspend disbelief and start accepting the fact that this is going on?

Yes, it is hard to stomach. It is hard to acknowledge that the leaders you respect, the people you plan to vote for could participate in such a filthy corruption of our electoral and constitutional processes. But it has to be equally clear to any person of logic that the sheer volume of these dirty tricks would tend to support the conclusions we have made.

What troubles me most is that people who I have come to respect as logical, intelligent people seek to attack me for questioning this, rather than questioning the tactic itself.

But David, that's how they've been trained to think over the past 25 years. It's a belief-based reality, not a fact-based reality. Facts won't change it. They won't even cause doubt. First you need to undermine the belief that 'Bush Is God Good' so therefore everything he does is ipso facto Good and everything done in His name is Good. Until you attack that core belief and shake it, you can cite all the facts you want until you're blue in the face and it won't put a dent in their rock-bound faith-based 'reality'.

# Finally, speaking of 'faith-based reality', Michael Berube has a question about an NYT Sunday magazine story about American evangelicals establishing 'Xtian businesses', which you can pretty much assume has nothing to do with being kind to their fellow man and everything to do with imagining that Christ approves of large profits.

I just have an innocent question about the inspirational painting on the office wall of Riverview Community Bank president Duane Kropuenske, which is reproduced on the Magazine‘s front cover. The painting is titled “Unending Riches” (you can check it out here for a better view) and it’s a portrait of Jesus standing with two businessmen in what is clearly an executive office. In the background is a generic cityscape, framed in a large window. The businessman on the right seems to be introducing the businessman on the left to Christ, who’s shaking hands and wearing white robes.

Moloch Visits the Bowels of Hell Disguised as Christ

OK, so check out what’s on the wall behind the shoulder of the guy on the left. It’s another inspirational painting of some kind! Have you ever seen anything like this before? A piece of inspirational workplace art that includes, in a mise en abyme, another piece of inspirational workplace art? It’s too weird. And more important, why would this particular office need an inspirational painting in the first place? I mean, Jesus Christ Himself works for them!! They’ve already got the power of the Almighty right there, standing behind the desk with the laptop-- what more do they need?? Are you trying to tell me that even the firm that employs the Son of God has to festoon its office walls with “motivational” posters?

I just think that’s blasphemous.

He's got a point, but the kicker to me was that if you hit the link for the picture, you find this scriptural quote directly under it:

Unending riches, honor, and success are Mine to give… My paths are those of justice and truth. Those who love and follow Me are indeed wealthy, and I will fill their treasuries. - Proverbs 8:18-21

This is what's most dangerous about fundies: THEY DON'T GET METAPHOR. It's just, like, beyond their capacities. They think he meant that literally: that if they follow him, he'll make them rich. I have no idea how they explain the episode of the temple and the money-lenders. Maybe they think Christ was pissed off because he wasn't getting a piece of the action. Or maybe they think Jesus was an investor and their profit margin wasn't high enough to kick his stock portfolio into overdrive, earnings-wise, so he kicked their butts to get them off the stick, usury-wise. But you have to admit, it's quite a trick, interpretation-wise, to turn the guy who believed it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, into a guy who's, like, Tony Robbins in a robe.

Although, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. Maybe Christ, who can, after all (they brag about it themselves) see into the hearts of these corporate greedheads, just wants to help them get rich so he'll never have to deal with their presence in heaven. I'd like to think so, anyway. It makes more sense than their version.

(More on this anon. Undoubtedly.)

In a BuzzFlash interview with Greg Palast (via Working for Change via ratboy's anvil), he talks about his documentation of the disenfranchisement efforts by the GOP in 2000 that resulted in almost 2 million votes going uncounted, half of which were minority.

I've been working with the statisticians from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and Harvard Law School. In the year 2000, 1.9 million votes were cast and not counted across this country –- 1.9 million votes. And of those 1.9 million votes, about a million were cast by African-Americans. This investigation was conducted by Harvard and the Civil Rights Commission, and I grabbed the material. There's a 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave black people the right to vote, but not the right to have their votes counted.

All this came out of my first investigation in Florida. I brought it to the attention of the Civil Rights Commission that the so-called "spoilage rate" seemed to be different among black people than with white people. What that means is that, if you make a mistake on a ballot, or if there's some problem with reading your ballot, your vote doesn't count.

In Florida, the researchers went precinct by precinct and determined that if you are a black person, you are 10 times more likely to have your vote marked spoiled and voided than if you're a white voter –- 10 times! And what's disgusting is that that is the national average. So we basically have a big black thumbprint on the electoral scale in our election, and it's going to be worse in 2004.

---

As it turns out in Florida, 90,000 mostly African-American voters -- which is the latest official number from the courts -- were illegally targeted for removal from the voter rolls. Those people were not allowed to even register to vote and therefore didn't cast a ballot in the election.

But for those African-Americans who did get to vote, their votes were far more likely not to be counted than other votes. I saw this in Florida, and it is deliberate. When it's 10 to 1, as any statistician told me, unless lightning strikes seven times in one spot, how can it not be deliberate?

For example, in black counties in Florida where paper ballots were used, if you made a mistake on a ballot -– a single wrong mark –- your ballot was thrown out and your vote wasn't counted. If you voted in predominantly white counties, and you made a wrong mark, your ballot was handed back to you. You were given a fresh ballot, and told to vote again and told how to correct your mistake. How about that?
(emphasis added)

What we're seeing this year is worse, a ratcheting up with the bold use of political operatives in positions of power (state Secs of State, Atty's Gen, county election officials, Govs) changing the rules to, as that Detroit Republican put it, 'suppress the vote.' Palast says changing the rules is SOP for the GOP.

[T]he trick of this apartheid "spoilage rate" -- that's the technical term -- the trick to lose a million votes or make them disappear is to keep radically changing the system. Because what happens is that technicians fix the systems. In Florida, they fixed the problem with the paper ballots, and, therefore, they had to throw out the paper ballots. For example, the blackest county in Florida is Gadston. One in eight voters -– one in eight voters! -– had their ballots thrown out in the blackest county in Florida. It had the worst spoilage rating, and they knew it. They knew that there was going to be this problem with their ballots in advance.

Democrats had warned election officials and warned Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush that this was going to happen, in advance of the election, and nothing was done. After the election, it was fixed. And in 2002, there were basically no spoiled ballots in Gadston. So now that black people have their votes counted in Gadston, they've now been ordered to switch them over to computers. Because the system currently works -– it's been fixed -– and that can't stand.

And as we reported, e-voting machines are already showing signs of tampering in Texas and New Mexico that turn a choice for Kerry into a vote for Bush--'accidentally', or because of 'voter error'. As usual, none of this is being reported by the mainstream press. Palast has given up thinking it ever will be.

I can't tell you how many progressive reporters say, well, in Florida, all these thousands of black people -– the state said that it's all fixed now, and they've all been returned to the polls and are eligible. I said, "Name five people who have been returned to the polls out of the 90,000 who lost their vote." I just went down to Florida and I found the missing voters. And I asked, "Can you vote now?" "No." "Have you tried to register?" "No, can't do it." It's still the same game and the same con. And the last thing that the media chieftains are going to do is say that the American elections are fixed.

You know what's amazing to me? The Los Angeles Times ran a profile of Greg Palast -– you know, the great international investigative reporter born in Los Angeles yada yada -- a nice profile, right? So I went to the editor, and I said, "If I'm the great international investigative reporter, why don't you actually run one of my reports?" I said, "You know, there's a million black votes missing in America."

They weren't interested.

Kathy at RANDOM THOUGHTS on Politics has compiled a fairly complete list of Republican attempts to squelch the Democratic vote, particularly in minority areas. She has a bevy of links you can check so you know what's going on.

Ohio seems to be the central battleground for Republican dirty tricks. Jerome Armstrong at My DD reports that the latest scam involves sending registered mail to voters and then challenging any that don't respond by picking it up.

The details about "Caging" and what the Republicans have planned to do are coming into view. The Republicans have been compiling lists (probably in the tens of thousands) of voters whom they have culled from lists of those newly registered, mailing registered mail to them, preparing lists of those who did not accept the Republican Party mailing, and then challenging their right to vote.

ELECTION BOARD THROWS OUT 976 CHALLENGES BY REPUBLICAN PARTY

GOP Challenger Barbara Miller Could be Indicted on Felony Charges


AKRON, Ohio - The Summit County Board of Elections abruptly threw out 976 challenges of voter eligibility by the Republican Party today after Barbara Miller, the challenger, revealed that she did not have any personal information about the eligibility of any of the challenged voters.


Instead, Miller said that her challenges were based on a list of "undeliverable mail" given to her by the Republican Party. The list was based on a GOP mailing sent to registered voters throughout the state of Ohio.


After Miller presented this as her evidence, Russell Pry, Summit County Election Board member, told her that she could be indicted for signing a sworn challenge without any personal knowledge about the eligibility of the voters. Miller's reaction was to plead the Fifth Amendment.


Catherine Herold, the first voter challenged at the hearing, told the board that she believes that she was on the undeliverable list because she "refused the letter when she saw that it came from the Republican Party." She and many others expressed anger that their eligibility had been challenged - which could force them to vote by provisional ballot on Nov. 2.


"This is an outrage," Herold said. "I feel as if I am being called a liar for claiming to live at my address."


The Summit County Board of Elections has indicated that they plan to call in the Department of Justice to conduct a criminal investigation of the challenges.

John Williams at Thudfactor, which is where I found the link, lays out the beauty of the way this slimy, undemocratic, sleazeball attempt at fraud works.

Registered mail must be signed for. If you are not home when registered mail arrives, you have to go to the Post Office and pick it up. If you do not it gets sent back as “undeliverable.”

Now, imagine you don’t like the Republican party and you get a notice that mail from the RNC is waiting for you at the post office and you have to come in and stand in line to pick it up. If you’re like me, you say “I’m not voting for their man, and I’m certainly not going to the Post Office to pick up more campaign junk mail.” Hell. If the DNC sent me something registered mail without warning me, I probably wouldn’t pick it up.

Almost sounds like this mail test was designed in bad faith, doesn’t it? Almost as though they wanted false positives.

'Almost'. A short round-up of some of these illegal and/or unethical scams made its way into the NYT today but with one crucial detail missing. See if you can guess what it is.

Reckless voting-roll purges are still throwing eligible voters off the rolls. And this year has produced new outrages, such as Glenda Hood, the Florida secretary of state, ordering election officials to throw out voter registrations when applicants fail to check a box saying they are citizens - even though they swear they are elsewhere on the form.

---

[I]t's hard to avoid the conclusion that at least some of these officials are intentionally trying to stop eligible people from voting. Ohio's secretary of state recently issued an order, which he rescinded in the face of loud protests, that voter registrations submitted on insufficiently thick paper would be thrown out. Last week, Missouri's secretary of state said there was nothing wrong with groups that run registration drives throwing out registrations that they promised to hand in.

Did you catch the glaring omission? Yes, that's right, boys and girls, he didn't mention the party these three officials belong to. They are, needless to say, all three of them, Republicans. In its ever-increasing determination not to piss off the party in power, the NYT is loading its coverage of GOP dirty tricks with language meant to make it sound like 'everybody's doing it'. Except 'everybody' isn't doing it. The Republicans are doing it, exclusively and everywhere there's a chance it could make a difference.

They're not even bothering to hide it effectively; it's as if they don't really care whether they get caught or not. And why should they? Their core constituency has been so brainwashed and is so inured at this point to degradation and slime that they actually defend these tactics using the excuse that the Dems are setting up phony voter drives. That there is ZERO evidence of this doesn't phase them a bit. They know it's happening and therefore they're simply acting in self-defense.

But of course the Dems are rigging votes. They're traitors, scum, liars, and thieves. They don't have ethics and scruples like the GOP. They would do anything to win whereas the poor Republicans are always at a disadvantage because they're trying to play by the rules. And the SCLM in the person of the NYT obligingly gives them cover by pretending that 'everybody does it.'

Go to the My DD link and read the transcript of the hearing. Ms. Miller may wind up going to jail for being the GOP's down-home patsy on this. And remember--they're challenging 35,000 votes. As of today, only a thousand of them are safe.

River at Baghdad Burning has a few words to say about how our election looks from there.

American Elections 2004...
Warning- the following post is an open letter of sorts to Americans.

So elections are being held in America. We’re watching curiously here. Previously, Iraqis didn’t really take a very active interest in elections. We knew when they were being held and quite a few Iraqis could give an opinion about either of the candidates. I think many of us realized long ago that American foreign policy really had nothing to do with this Democrat or that Republican.

It sometimes seems, from this part of the world, that democracy in America revolves around the presidential elections- not the major decisions. War and peace in America are in the average American’s hands about as much as they are in mine. Sure, you can vote for this man or that one, but in the end, there’s something bigger, more intricate and quite sinister behind the decisions. Like in that board game Monopoly, you can choose the game pieces- the little shoe, the car, the top hat… but you can’t choose the way the game is played. The faces change but the intentions and the policy remain the same.

Many, many people have asked me about the elections and what we think of them. Before, I would have said that I really don’t think much about it. Up until four years ago, I always thought the American elections were a pretty straightforward process: two white males up for the same position (face it people- it really is only two- Nader doesn’t count), people voting and the person with more votes wins. After the debacle of four years ago, where Bush Jr. was *assigned* president, things are looking more complicated and a little bit more sordid.

I wouldn’t normally involve myself in debates or arguments about who should be American president. All I know is that four years ago, we prayed it wouldn’t be Bush. It was like people could foresee the calamity we’re living now and he embodied it. (Then, there’s that little issue of his being completely ridiculous…)

After a fairly tame beginning, she really gets rolling.

Someone once wrote to me, after a blog barrage against Bush, that I should tone down my insults against the president because I would lose readers who actually supported him. I lost those readers the moment I spoke out against the war and occupation because that is what Bush is all about. He’s not about securing America or Iraq or ‘the region’- he’s about covering up just how inadequate he is as a person and as a leader with war, nonexistent WMD, fabled terrorists and bogeymen.

---

Some people associate the decision to go to war as a ‘strength’. How strong do you need to be to commit thousands of your countrymen and women to death on foreign soil? Especially while you and your loved ones sit safely watching at home. How strong do you need to be to give orders to bomb cities to rubble and use the most advanced military technology available against a country with a weak army and crumbling infrastructure? You don’t need to be strong- you need to be mad.

Americans- can things be worse for you? Can things be worse for us in Iraq? Of course they can… only imagine- four more years of Bush.

Go read the rest.

Sondra Kornblatt's Dad is never wrong about who wins. Since he turned 21 in time to vote for Truman, Mr Kornblatt has voted for the winner in every Presidential election. This year, he's voting for Kerry.

He supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, his focus on business, and the concerns against terrorism. He doesn't love Kerry. But that's who he's voting for. Bush, says my dad, surrounds himself with mean people and a president is only as good as his Cabinet.

I type my father's decision with my Kerry-Edwards button on my chest. I hope my bellwether-dad rings true another election.

Yeah, Sondra. Us too.

Well, everybody knew it was going to get nastier the closer the election got, and we knew the Bushies have no scruples, they've proved that time and again. So actually, I suppose, it shouldn't really shock anybody that the same IRS that ignored Jerry Falwell's blatant politicking on behalf of Bush despite numerous vocal objections is threatening to revoke the NAACP's tax-exempt status because Chairman Julian Bond dared to criticize Dear Leader in a speech.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The Internal Revenue Service has begun reviewing the tax-exempt status of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, citing concerns over a speech given by its chairman, Julian Bond, at its annual convention last July in Philadelphia.

In a letter dated Oct. 8 and released Thursday, the I.R.S. told the association it had received information that Mr. Bond conveyed "statements in opposition of George W. Bush for the office of presidency" and specifically that he had "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush in education, the economy and the war in Iraq."

The letter reminded the association that tax-exempt organizations are legally barred from supporting or opposing any candidate for elective office.

Mr. Bond's speech on July 11 included a long section that sharply criticized the Republican Party, Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for their positions on an array of issues important to black Americans.

In an interview Thursday, Mr. Bond defended his remarks, saying they focused on policy, not politics.

"This is an attempt to silence the N.A.A.C.P. on the very eve of a presidential election," he said. "We are best known for registering and turning out large numbers of African-American voters. Clearly, someone in the I.R.S. doesn't want that to happen."

He added, "It's Orwellian to believe that criticism of the president is not allowed or that the president is somehow immune from criticism."

This action is less Orwellian than Tammany Hall-ian. Or Richard Nixonian. It's the pure exercise of unrestrained power trying to hang on. The Bushies are leaving no base uncovered, no stone unturned, no election law unbroken in their manic effort to put Dear Leader back in the driver's seat so they can end this irrelevant, annoying 'democracy thing', throw it on the Trash Heap of History where it belongs, and replace it with a time-honored system that has been the rule for most of civilized mankind's time on the planet: the Imperial Oligarchy.

Back to the Future we go.

In yet another bold bid to move Constitutionally-mandated powers from the judiciary to the executive branch, Ashcroft's Dept of Injustice is arguing that courts have no right to accept legal challenges brought by voters. That's right, campers: the DoI is reserving that right to itself and itself alone.

WASHINGTON — Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.

Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters or the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.

But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide "uniform and nondiscriminatory" voting systems, and give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.

"Congress clearly did not intend to create a right enforceable" in court by individual voters, the Justice Department briefs said.

This statement is breath-taking in its legal assumptions. What the DoI is saying is that NO law is enforceable by the courts unless the Congress explicitly says it is. This doesn't just trash 'decades of precedent', it trashes the whole notion of a judiciary independent of Congressional or Executive will. So much for the Constitutional separation-of-powers doctrine.

Some election-law experts believe the administration has set the stage for arguing that the federal courts may not second-guess decisions of state election officials in Ohio, Florida or elsewhere.

J. Gerald Hebert, a former chief of the department's voting-rights section, said he was dismayed that the government was seeking to weaken a measure designed to protect voters.

"This is the first time in history the Justice Department has gone to court to side against voters who are trying to enforce their right to vote. I think this law will mean very little if the rights of American voters have to depend on this Justice Department," said Hebert, who worked in the voting-rights section from 1973 to 1994.

Um, yeah. Tell it, J Gerald.

Duh.