Support the Count Every Vote Act
It's old news, actually, but Senators Clinton, Kerry, Boxer, Mikulski, and Lautenberg have introduced a bill in the Senate called the "Count Every Vote Act" (now listed as S. 450*). The bill addresses a great number of the flaws in this country's election process that the last several elections have revealed. The People for the American Way web site summarizes the 65-page bill's provisions as follows:

More Accountable and Accessible Voting Systems
The Count Every Vote Act would:
1. Require that all voting systems produce a paper record that can be verified by the individual voter and that would constitute the official record for any recount;
2. Require a mandatory recount of voter-verified paper records in 2 percent of all polling places or precincts in each state;
3. Set minimum standards for the number of voting systems and poll workers at each precinct, and require that every precinct have at least one machine that can provide audio and pictorial verification and that is accessible to language minority voters;
4. Establish new security standards for voting equipment manufacturers, including a ban on using undisclosed software and wireless communications devices in voting systems.

More Opportunities for Citizens to Register to Vote and Cast Their Ballots
The Count Every Vote Act would:
1. Allow voters to register and cast a ballot on election day;
2. Require states to provide in-person early voting opportunities before Election Day;
3. Prohibit states from demanding excuses from voters who request absentee ballots;
4. Give voters more options for proving their identity to election officials;
5. Prohibit election officials from rejecting voter registration applications that are missing information which has no effect on the specific voter's eligibility.

Discourage Partisan Manipulation and Deceptive Practices in Elections
The Count Every Vote Act would:
1. Make certain federal election campaign activities off limits to chief state election officials and top-level executives and owners of voting system manufacturers;
2. Require states to act in a uniform and transparent manner when attempting to purge voters from state registration lists;
3. Provide for the prosecution of those who engage in deceptive practices to keep people from voting in federal elections.

Expand the Right to Vote
The Count Every Vote Act would:
1. Require states to allow ex-felons who have completed their prison, parole and probation terms to register and vote in federal elections.

Ensure That All Votes Are Counted
The Count Every Vote Act would:
1. Require that provisional ballots be counted state-wide, allowing voters who are registered in a state but cast provisional ballots in a wrong precinct to still have their votes counted for all eligible federal races.

There's actually more, including the excellent idea of making federal election days federal holidays.

I don't even want to discuss the political points to be scored here, or guess how likely it is that the bill will pass. I'm very pleased and proud that leading Democrats are putting this bill forward, but these are ideas that deserve your support whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, or anything else. I've supported paper receipts for electronic voting for a while now, and just to see that issue acknowledged in Congress is great, to say nothing of the high-powered support it's getting. Standards for voting systems and poll workers per precinct are also long overdue.

You can keep posted about the bill's progress and learn about how else to help get it passed at the People for the American Way web site. Again, though, I hope this won't be seen as a "liberal" or "Democratic" issue, because I'd like this stuff to pass, and obviously the numbers won't work if it's just Democrats supporting this.


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* EDIT, 3/14: "S. 450" link to govtrack.us site added.
UPDATE, 3/15: Some discussion at SayUncle. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:06:00 AM -- |    

 
Volunteer Tailgate Party: lawyers, guns, and funny
Another installment of Tennessee blogging, this time at Miss Zoot, who deserves extra thanks and good wishes for doing this during a difficult time for her.

One interesting post was a discussion of the Valerie Plame case at "What It Is Today." The "News Writer" agrees with Nina Totenberg of NPR that Robert Novak has already divulged his source to prosecutors. He supports forcing other journalists like Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller to divulge their contact for the story as well. It's a weird situation, since they're protecting someone whose serious crime (if indeed there was one) was to talk with them, rather different from protecting a whistleblower.

If it were me, I guess I'd feel like if Novak caved, I'd certainly have no reason not to myself; I guess either they don't, or the prosecutors don't feel like proving Novak caved to them. You'd think there'd also be other ways of confirming Novak's story. And you'd think the prosecutors would already have got whoever Novak fingered to deny it under oath. One can only hope as much rigor is applied here as in the Monica Lewinsky case!

Another interesting one was "Guess they're down to 999,999 mommies now" by SayUncle, who noticed a story about Annette Stevens of Springfield, Illinois, an anti-assault weapons activist arrested for possession of an illegal handgun. Like Instapundit (who just quotes the juicy part and goes "Hmm."), SayUncle and several thousand others imply there's a contradiction where there really isn't one: being against assault weapons -- her goal and that of the Million Mom March --- is not at all the same as being against all guns or against handguns.*

Moreover, if you read the story, it turns out the handgun was her dead son's, and even the alleged drugs found in her home are in dispute. Ms. Stevens (the news account helpfully provides the nickname "Flirty") merely knows people in her neighborhood who may have been involved in drive-by gunfire -- which is easily misread to imply that she's directly involved with gang-related activities.

The whole incident smells a little funny, as if someone decided to get her in trouble by tipping off police about an old gun without registration or serial numbers she'd decided to shut away in a drawer. In fairness, this is partly SayUncle's point too -- only he blames abuse of the relevant laws on the lawmakers, and I blame their abuse on the police.

Finally, there was this by "Gunner," about court rulings upholding an Alabama ban on the sale of sex toys:

What happens between me, my wife, the inflatable doll, the midget in the corner and the camera man is my own business.

I agree 110%.


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* In our discussion on his site, SayUncle points out that Million Mom March/Brady Campaign was against the Congressional repeal of the DC hand gun ban. But an MMM/BC press release argued that the repeal not only overturned the hand gun ban, but "also prevent[s] the city from enacting new laws to prevent gun violence." posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:40:00 PM -- |    

 
Roving Times editors observed
I happened to read Nicholas Lemann's 80th anniversary New Yorker article Fear and Favor last night. Lemann served up a nice bit of reporting right away -- but treated it as background, not the lede:

Just before last fall’s Presidential election, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, and Philip Taubman, the paper’s Washington bureau chief, went on the road to inspect the candidates’ campaigns. In Florida, on October 22nd, they arranged to have drinks with Karl Rove, the White House’s chief political strategist, and Dan Bartlett, its head of communications. It was supposed to be a friendly get-together, and that’s how it went for the first few minutes, until Keller asked Rove what he thought of the Times’ coverage. (emphasis added)

Does this strike anyone else as a little odd? Why should Keller care what Rove thinks of the Times' coverage at all? Remember, this is October 22nd, less than two weeks before the election, and the executive editor of one of the most important newspapers in the land is asking the most important advisor of a contestant in that election for ... what? A pat on the back? A head's up that all isn't well? Lemann let Keller off the hook -- even if Rove didn't:

It’s the sort of question that editors often ask important people, in the same spirit that a politician asks, “How’m I doing?,” usually hoping for an answer somewhere in the lower-middle range of politeness and candor. But Rove, Keller told me not long ago, “pounded on us for two cocktails’ worth of conversation.”

Sounds rough! Rove said the Times was ignoring Bush accomplishments and Kerry flaws, and was looking too hard (or unfairly) at the Bush record, and was thereby "arming" the Kerry campaign. Keller, perhaps softened up by those cocktails, absorbed what he was told, Lemann writes:

“Your initial reaction, especially in someone as ferocious as Rove, is to drop into a defensive crouch,” he said. “But I try not to do that. I listened, with a fair measure of skepticism, because a lot of it is calculated. But there was some genuineness to it. He went through a long litany of complaints. I do think he was channelling a feeling about the New York Times that’s out there in the land, that we should be concerned about, or at least aware of. (emphasis added)

Good Lord. Usually, putting pressure on the press at least means you have to at least go to the trouble of finding them. Here, the executive editor of a major paper basically went to great lengths to seek out his own mau-mauing, and then report via a third party that it was working. "Thank you, sir! May I please have another!"

One reason I mention this goes back to an earlier post, wondering if Rove pressured the Times to drop the "bulge" story (about Bush allegedly wearing some kind of device during the debates) with an October 27 phone call. Daniel Okrent's disbelief notwithstanding, Lemann's piece suggests that Keller would have been pretty receptive to such a phone call.

Or, of course, that such a phone call was no longer necessary. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:17:00 PM -- |    

 
A day (or so) in the life of HIV
All stories via the excellent AEGiS (AIDS Education Global Information System) news service:

• Analysis: Much worry over new AIDS patient (Ed Susman, UPI) --- A New York patient carrying a previously unknown, drug-resistant, and highly virulent strain of HIV is causing concern among medical professionals because of his promiscuous history. The article cautions that much is not yet known about the case, and that it apparently remains an isolated incident.
  
  
• HIV Infection Rate Among Blacks Doubles (Jeff Donn, AP) --- "Blacks are contracting HIV at twice the rate they were in the late 1980s and early '90s, which researchers and AIDS prevention advocates attribute to drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health care, according to government statistics."
  
  Moreover, the new results from NHANES survey data are probably an underestimate of the problem, since homeless and prison populations are not sampled. The story continues: "Other national data and published reports studied by the CDC showed that 480,000 HIV-infected people ages 15 to 49 should have been getting antiviral drugs in 2003, yet only 268,000, or 56 percent, were given such medication."
  
  
• Vaginal gel can prevent AIDS infection (UPI) --- "The study funded by the National Institutes of Health investigated the efficacy of PRO 2000, a topical microbicide under development by Indevus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The team discovered that in women infected with HIV or herpes simplex the gel reduced infectivity by at least 1,000 fold.
  
  This may become one of the most cost-effective ways of slowing the spread of HIV in developing countries. Let's hope it doesn't run afoul of .... uh-oh:
  
  
• Bush Ties Money For AIDS Work To a Policy Pledge (Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal) --- "The Bush administration is barring private American AIDS organizations from winning federal grants to provide health services overseas unless they pledge their opposition to prostitution, as part of a broader Republican effort in recent weeks to apply conservative values to foreign-assistance programs."
  
  It's logical: if we make prostitution riskier, prostitution will go away!
  
  
• Fact Sheet: U.S. Federal Funding for HIV/AIDS: The FY 2006 Budget Request (Kaiser Family Foundation) --- "The total HIV/AIDS budget request for FY 2006 is $21.0 billion, a 7% increase over FY 2005 funding of $19.7 billion. Most of the growth was due to increases in mandatory domestic spending and funding for global HIV/AIDS."
  
  More here.
  

That's only a small sample of the news. By the way, AEGiS has an XML feed for its news message board; consider adding it to your aggregator. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:25:00 PM -- |    

 
Bam! Bam! That's how it should be

Look at a couple of recent headlines. Here's "Republicans are Chastened on Social Security" from The New York Times and here's "GOP May Seek a Deal on Accounts" from The Washington Post. Republican legislators are stuck between the hard place of their donor base and the rock of public opinion. As the Post article details, they're looking for a face-saving compromise, an "exit strategy," and some bipartisan cover. It would be absurd for Democrats to offer this to them. The party's goal should be to smash the stuck members. Once, in Maine, I went to a big lobster cook on the rocky coast where you had to break the shells by putting the cooked crustacean down on the rocks, then picking up a smaller rock and slamming it into the lobster. Bam! Bam! That's how it should be.

Mild-mannered Matt Yglesias. Just yesterday I was laughing at Jeff Jarvis for fearing Oliver Willis wanted to eliminate the Republican Party. But now I guess he was just worried about the wrong guy.

Bam! Bam! Mmm, tasty. (Via Saltman) posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:55:00 PM -- |    

 
Belated Oscar blogging
Best Movie: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

That will be all. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Yes, Gannon/Guckert matters
I have to agree with "The Poor Man" about "Daily Howler" Bob Somerby's recent diatribe short-shrifting the Gannon/Guckert story. Somerby is uncharacteristically, incomparably dead wrong: "Why won’t news orgs cover Jeff Gannon? Could it be because Gannon ain’t news?" Somerby adds:

The conservative web, yapping loudly, arranges to take out a Big Major Player. In retaliation, the liberal web goes after a Complete Total Nobody, then complains when it doesn’t get coverage!

This is partly a difference of opinion between Somerby and others about What's Really Wrong With Media Today. I think it's not so much that Somerby has lost the plot as that it isn't the exact plot he prefers, one that's well summarized by a little ditty Hendrik Hertzberg recited in his New Yorker precis of the whole affair:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

Substitute for "British" descriptions like "White House" or "Washington press corps" and you have a good chance of predicting the topic and tone of yet another acerbic, informative, incomparable "Daily Howler" post. And Somerby is generally quite right in describing a fundamental lack of curiosity and a go along to get along spirit in the American press.

But that may not be the only story out there, Mr. Somerby! Just to recap the outlines of this story, a bogus news agency was concocted, a bogus reporter was created, and then that bogus reporter was repeatedly accredited in order to shape political coverage along lines preferred by the White House and its political allies. It seems to me a closer look at Gannon/Guckert is worthwhile just to understand how stories and "memes" are planted in the news cycle, and how valuable that seems to be in crowding and herding the rest of the news media.

Somerby's implications notwithstanding, G/G wasn't just one softball-tossing journalist among many; his verbatim use of White House talking points might have eventually raised suspicion even among White House press corpses. And while G/G's Zelig-like appearances near the center of numerous stories of the day -- Rathergate, the Daschle South Dakota election campaign, the Plame-Wilson business -- aren't utterly inconsistent with being a regular journalist, surely they're remarkable for someone with "Gannon's" (lack of) background and generally relevant skill sets. In all, I think the story strongly resembles the Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Pentagon faux news outlet stories in revealing an administration seeking to seed the national discourse with its own points of view without leaving fingerprints.

Moreover, Gannon/Guckert's Talon News home base is (or was) part of a larger GOPUSA organization featuring folks like Bruce Eberle (not related to or to be confused with GOPUSA owner Bobby Eberle). Bruce's resume is by turns seedy and interesting; his association with Omega List Company is most germane to this discussion, because he was updating political payola to the age of the internets. Sheldon Rampton of PRWatch describes the game:

On a section of the website that has subsequently been removed, Omega List was quite straightforward about the fact that it pays conservative commentators to endorse clients and their causes. [...] "Omega will call you with an opportunity to send an endorsement e-mail to your list . . . and receive a royalty for lending your name to a cause, organization or product you believe in. . . . Omega gives you their specialized software absolutely FREE and presents you with an opportunity to earn an extra $25,000 or more annually.

Thus, GOPUSA seems to be lousy with people who could figure out useful angles for themselves or their clientele by pretending to be objective journalists, and Gannon/Guckert is one piece of that story.

The Nation's David Corn, another media figure who cautions against overhyping the Gannon/Guckert story, is right to counsel against stressing Guckert's other profession (male prostitution and pimping) since that appears to have no bearing on anything including Guckert's own writing about gay issues. He may also be right to hope Guckert's reporter's notes don't get subpoenaed by Novak (one would wish)/Plame investigator Patrick Fitzgerald. Corn comes close to dismissing the whole thing here:

But this is not the same as paying columnists to shill for the administration, producing pro-administration propaganda packaged as news reports, mounting fake town meetings, or restricting the number of press conferences. And to date there is no compelling evidence that the White House recruited or deployed Gannon/Guckert as a plant.

Taking this in order: no, of course it's not the same, it's similar. And it depends on what your definition of "compelling" is. Of course it's not a lock that the White House "planted" Gannon/Guckert. But at minimum, they stacked the deck in their favor by just waving in someone they had every reason to believe would go easy on them during briefings.

Leftoid bloggers can't dot every "i" and cross every "t" on this story. How close were the connections between Karl Rove and GOPUSA? How did Gannon/Guckert's sideline as a reliable supplier of constant anti-Daschle noise (but no serious charges) to South Dakota conservative bloggers come about? Can Gannon/Guckert shed light on his clairvoyant, near light speed recognition of the "Rathergate" documents as forgeries?

For more and no doubt better on this by an experienced media critic, see Jay Rosen (via Ken Layne, whose post you should read as well), who links the G/G story to a wider story he describes as "de-certification" of the established media. Among the many good insights out of this post: "Whomever declared 'Jeff Gannon' a valid correspondent believed, first, in the invalidity of the regular White House correspondents, whose representatives had of course rejected Gannon for a regular pass."

Somerby and Corn essentially ask, "Why go to all this trouble when the press is so tame to begin with?" As well ask why a football team would go for the sixth touchdown of the day: part of the answer is that you never know when you might need that last extra point. And the rest of the answer is that running up the score is fun.

And by the way, you're losing. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:48:00 PM -- |    

 
Various and sundry

• Mark Longmire "reimagines" romance novel covers.
  
• We can now report anyone who annoys us to David Horowitz's McCarthyesque "Discover the Network" site; just think of something semi-liberal they've said or done once. For an example, here's the DTN Jay Leno profile -- he once wrote jokes for Hillary! His wife is a feminist!
  
• The suggestion comes via an appropriately anonymous tip over at the Poor Man's "GOP split?" post, in which The Editors propose that lefty-baiting may be all that still unites the paleocon, neocon and plain old con elements of the Grandest of all possible Old Parties.
  
• A month old but none the worse for wear: Crooked Timber's Ask a Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert. The comments were the best part ... "Sound and dive, young lady, sound and dive."

News of Bloggers I've Corresponded With Now and Then

• Ken Layne is the proud father of a baby boy! Congratulations!
• Sergeant Stryker will have to quit smoking. Hang in there!
• Gary Farber has resumed blogging with a vengeance. (This is just one of about a dozen posts over the weekend.) Keep it up!
• Brett Marston has been accepted to Georgetown's Law Center. Congratulations!
  

posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:00:00 PM -- |    

 
Good point
...via Julie Saltman, about the smear of the AARP by USA Next (is that name a threat?):

My friend Ripper reminded me that the media's closed lip policy on this is a telling departure from their earlier principled obsession with the Moveon.org "Hitler ads." While those thirty second ads created for free by anonymous contestants elicited all the disapproval the media could muster, this ad, funded and commissioned by a wealthy, Texas conservative activist to smear the reputation of the AARP in order to sway public opinion on a major policy debate over social security just doesn't pique their interests. (links in original)

Saltman adds:

I'm tired of making excuses for the press. At a certain point, you can't just pass it off as laziness and ignorance anymore. It becomes outright bias, and it's maddening because there seems to be nothing we can do about it.

She also passes along Robert Farley's ("Lawyers, Guns and Money") summary:

The Republican Party of 2005: Love America blindly and hate the queers. Please don't ask about what happened to your social security check.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:45:00 PM -- |