More from the Department of Injustice

More on the Department of Injustice
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, May, 31, 2007 – Page 3 by Ted Mallory http://tmal.multiply.com

“Caging” is a technique that political operatives use to disqualify voters. This is not just another political “Dirty Trick,” (remember those from the Nixon era?) Caging is a way of targeting a group of voters that you suspect will vote for your opponent, and making sure that their vote doesn’t count.

One way to cage is to send registered mail to a voter’s address. The cager hopes that the mail will be returned as undeliverable, or that the voter will refuse to sign for the letter. When that happens, they can use the failed delivery to call the voter’s home address into question and force them to prove that they can legally vote.

“Caging lists” are simply rosters of people who didn’t respond to the registered mailing. These lists are given to political operatives who volunteer to work at the polls on election day. When someone on the list shows up to vote, the operatives will challenge them. Often voters give up and leave without voting, or cast a provisional ballot which is less likely to be counted.
Caging targets the most vulnerable voters, people who might have the hardest time proving their status. For instance; the elderly, Black veterans or homeless people.

Former liaison to the White House for the Justice Department, Monica Goodling testified to the House Judiciary Committee, last week that Deputy Attorney General McNulty knew that the White House’s pick of interim US Attorney for Eastern Arkansas, Tim Griffin, had been involved in vote caging during the 2004 presidential election. Griffin, a former research director of the Republican National Committee, was behind a plot to disenfranchise 70,000 Florida voters during the 2004 presidential election, according to BBC News.

Hmmm. Sure would be convenient for Republicans to be able to suppress votes in Arkansas come 2008. In the event that the Democratic Presidential candidate were to be, say, the former First Lady of that state, delivering a big win to whatever Republican candidate is running would sure make her look bad.

The most frightening thing about this whole Justice Department mess is that it has turned up proof like this, that there is a ruthless movement among some (not all, mind you) Republicans to establish a one-party system in our country.

I have moderate friends who say, “yeah but we shouldn’t concentrate too much power in the hands of the Democrats either, because neither party should control all three branches of government.

Yeah, okay, except that they’re forgetting that as Will Rogers once said, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
This caging business is more than enough reason for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to be impeached.

Much of Goodling’s also testimony underscored the inconsistency (dishonesty?) of Attorney General Gonzales’ previous testimony.

And incase you didn’t hear about it from the mainstream media (Larry King was busy talking about Joey Buttafuco and Amy Fischer’s affair- circa 1997!) There’s also the little thing about how Gonzo tried to strong arm his predecessor into violating the Constitution for the President.
You hadn’t heard about that? Oh, well, it seems like former Attorney General John Ashcroft (no great defender of civil rights and civil liberties himself) was on his death bed after an attack of gallbladder pancreatitis.

According to testimony from former Deputy Atty. Gen. James Comey, Gonzales, then the top White House lawyer, and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card tried to persuade Ashcroft to sign papers reauthorizing President Bush’s controversial warrantless domestic wiretapping program.

Ashcroft, former Solicitor General Theodore Olson and FBI Director Robert Mueller all believed the program to be illegal and were all willing to quit, rather than sign off on it.
Ashcroft reminded the two thugs that he wasn’t even acting Attorney General at the time and that they’s have to ask Comey. The left without even acknowledging Comey was in the hospital room.

That night Card called Comey and demanded that he meet with them in the White house.
Comey refused to meet with them without witnesses. He asked FBI Director Oslon to accompany him. The four men discussed their differences over the program and the next day the White house reauthorized the program without any approval from the Justice Department.

I know that the Democrats will never have the votes to impeach President Bush or Vice President Cheney, but I think that there may be enough Republicans who actually value the rule of law that they could impeach Gonzales. I don’t think that a mere non-binding “no confidence” vote goes far enough.

Please, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, write your Congressman and tell them that you value justice too much to let Gonzales continue as the top law enforcement officer of the land. Write IA Dist 5 Rep. Steve King Write IA Sen. Tom Harkin Write IA Sen. Chuck Grassley

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PS (About the Cartoon) Man, Lieberman burns me! Everyone is angry that the House Dems gave Bush what he wanted on the Iraq Funding bill, but the fact is that part of the pressure they're facing from Republicans is because of this dweeb from Connecticut. If only South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson would get healed-up and head back to DC.

On the technical side. I spent WAY too much time on this cartoon. ( I SO need to be getting the yearbook done) I'm also afraid that I relied on the "warp" tool in PhotoShop too much, instead of my own caricaturing skills. Be that as it may, I kind of like how it turned out. I think it looks like some REAL professional cartoonist somewhere did it, instead of me.

Oh, by the way- check out his tie! Cool huh?

Go see a lot more of my cartoons at http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2