-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 106 November, 2000
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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QUOTE:
Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the
West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are
the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships.
--Thomas H. Naylor
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Contents:
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--President? We don't need no stinking President!
--Post-Election Decisions
--Nation Plunges Into Chaos [satire]
--Bush Team Prepares 'Scorched-Earth Plan'
--Suit challenges Cheney's status
--How Democrats steal elections
--Greening From Ear To Ear
Linked stories:
*U.S. Government Allow Unabated Union Busting
*Adventures Through Inner Space
*Libertarians Demand Neutral Observers in Recount
*Getting ugly
*U.S. Spy Office Dying, Group Says
*Butterfly ballots no problem for first-graders in mock vote
*Navy flying home 3,000 lost ballots
*The government gang battles over the goods
*The Florida lawsuits
*U.S. Media: Egg On Their Faces?
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Begin stories:
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President? We don't need no stinking President!
by Fran Shor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hey, why all the hand-wringing and tumult? So, we won't have a new
President named Gore or Bush. Big deal! Since almost half of the eligible
voters didn't vote and the other half mostly split their vote between Gore
and Bush, you can figure that 3/4ths of the American people would be
unhappy with either. So, why not declare neither a winner and forget about
having a President?
I mean what does the President really do besides being a front man
for corporate interests. Why not just get GM, Exxon, General Electric,
Ford, etc., etc. to select the Central Committee and let them square off
with the Congress they mostly own?
Yeah, I know, we need someone to occupy the White House, help with
state dinners and go abroad now and then. Well, the corporate sponsors
could rotate this job and roll out their corporate logos accordingly.
Wouldn't the White House look good with a big Nike Swoosh on its pillars?
Hell, the Swoosh is already everywhere else. Why not the White House?
So, you think this is just a cynical response to the present
crisis? But what could be more cynical than the political establishment
and the corporate media counseling an end to the election battle by denying
the popular vote?
Even more cynical is trying to cover-up the endemic undemocratic
nature of the whole political system. Most people know the system is a
racket that favors those with the bucks and those who curry favor with all
the corporate lobbyists. Seven out of eight candidates who outspent their
opponents were elected this time. Talk about buying elections.
But, you say, look at how long this democracy has managed to
survive. Isn't there something to be said for the grand traditions of the
American political system? Which traditions are those? The ones born out
of slaveholding politics that denied freedom and liberty to millions, or
those elitists fearful of the democratic rabble?
But look at the wonders of the Constitution with its elaborate
system of checks and balances. Anyone taking a good look at the history of
the Constitution knows that it was originally (minus the Bill of Rights) a
reactionary document intended to stop the more radical forces of the
American revolution, such as those Quaker artisans in Pennsylvania whose
agitation against an executive branch, for rotation in office, and imposing
a limit on how much money individuals could make almost became the rules of
the game in that state.
So, if we need a tradition to call upon in this moment of crisis,
let's not haul out the worst elements of our past. Rather, let's pay
homage to those radical working class Quakers who fought power, privilege,
and slavery. Let's look even further back to the Iroquois Nation and its
federation principle. Did they need a President? Hell, no!
So, my fellow Americans, let's just pick ourselves up, dust
ourselves off, and start all over again. I've even got a good slogan for
the anti-Presidential campaign: "Don't Tread on Me!"
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Post-Election Decisions
Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * <http://www.accuracy.org> * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
___________________________________________________
November 15, 2000
ERIC FONER, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Professor of history at Columbia University, current president of the
American Historical Association and author of "The Story of American
Freedom" and "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution," Foner said
today: "In 1876, there was a dispute over the Hayes-Tilden presidential
election returns from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. An electoral
commission was formed (which was extra-constitutional), but behind the
scenes, the party bosses came up with the 'Bargain of 1877' which
effectively awarded the White House to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
but gave control of the South to the Democrats. At the time the Democratic
Party was the white supremacist party; it proceeded to take the vote away
from blacks in the South and impose the legal structure of racial
segregation. Behind the scenes deals always seem to be at somebody else's
expense."
MICHEL GELOBTER, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/~gelobter/florida.htm>
Assistant professor in the Graduate Department of Public Administration at
Rutgers University, Gelobter said today: "The current margin of difference
is not statistically significant, it is almost like flipping a coin. At the
conclusion of Wednesday morning's vote count, Bush held 48.904 percent of
the Florida vote, compared with 48.900 percent for Gore. A simple test of
this tiny difference -- four thousandths of one percentage point indicates
that there is a 45 percent chance that the difference is a result of random
error. Given enough vote re-counting, re-analysis, and, perhaps, re-voting,
a winner with a statistically defensible margin in Florida may yet emerge.
Barring this, a backroom deal may be cut."
GWEN PATTON, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Montgomery Pioneer Voting Rights Archivist at the Trenholm State Technical
College, Patton, who has done voter training in predominantly black areas
of Alabama and Florida, said today: "The Electoral College makes a mockery
of what we call a democracy. One person one vote -- that should be the
determinant of how we should conduct our elections. I've always been
suspicious of the voting process, because the vote should be the equalizer,
but the process can be corrupted. We should be training people in voting,
investing in the electoral process and ensuring the integrity of the vote.
We do so much to assure the validity and honesty for commercial
transactions such as banking, buying groceries or pumping gas. Surely we
should do more to validate the integrity of the vote."
ALAN HIRSCH, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
An attorney and professor at Hartwick College in New York and co-author of
"For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights" (Free
Press, 1998) as well as author of an unpublished novel about an Electoral
College crisis, Hirsch said today: "If Bush wins Florida and Gore wins New
Mexico, Bush's margin in the Electoral College is two votes. A switch of
two electors to Gore would result in a tie in the Electoral College. If
Bush wins Florida in a way that seems improper, pressure will no doubt be
mounted on the Bush electors in Florida, and perhaps elsewhere, to vote for
Gore when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 18."
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
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Nation Plunges Into Chaos [satire]
<http://onion.com/onion3641/nation_plunges_into_chaos.html>
Pro-Bush Rebels Seize Power In West; DC In Flames
WASHINGTON, DC
Presidential-election-related violence continued to spread across the
nation Tuesday, with Day Seven of the battle for the White House claiming
another 1,200 lives.
In Bush-controlled Tennessee, news of Gore's call for a sixth recount in
the disputed territory of Florida sparked full-scale rioting, with
Republican militiamen setting fire to Gore's heavily fortified Nashville
compound. It is believed Gore running mate Joseph Lieberman was trapped in
the blaze, though his whereabouts and status were unknown as of press time.
In Austin, Democrats continued to clash with armed Bush troops outside the
Texas capitol.
Inside, the Bush family waited for news on the welfare and whereabouts of
Dick Cheney, who was
carried off by a band of NARAL Reproductive-Freedom Fighters.
Washington sources reported via short-wave radio that the city is littered
with burning and abandoned National Guard tanks. The last D.C. television
transmissions, which were broadcast at 11:22 p.m. EST Monday, showed the
drowned bodies of more than 200 Young Republicans in the National Mall's
cyanide-laced reflecting pool. It is unknown whether the deaths are a mass
suicide or the work of a Democratic guerrilla group operating out of the
Gore-controlled territory of Maryland.
Since declaring himself President For Life, President Clinton has remained
sealed inside a subterranean White House bunker with a cadre of Secret
Service personnel and a stockpile of canned goods. Like the many state
governors who declared themselves regional warlords over the weekend,
Clinton said he plans to wait out the fighting in the streets.
Meanwhile, Bush and Gore steadfastly maintained their claims to the
presidency after respectively declaring Austin, TX, and Nashville the
provisional national capitals. While Gore controls much of the nation's
Northeast and Upper Midwest, Bush currently holds all territory west of the
Mississippi River except California and Washington. Each man has issued
commands to the American people to cease rioting and acknowledge him as
president and has ordered the armed forces to salute him as the next
Commander In Chief.
Borders between Gore states and Bush states have been witness to some of
the fiercest fighting of the past week. Along the Illinois-Indiana border,
an estimated 240 people have died in skirmishes, including 47 Danville, IL,
residents in a midnight Hoosier raid on the Gore-controlled state. On
Sunday, police at the Arizona-California border turned away more than
40,000 Golden State Republicans seeking to cross into Bush-controlled
Arizona. Democratic refugees attempting to cross in the opposite direction
were similarly rebuffed.
News of other presidential candidates is sketchy at best. On Monday, National
Public Radio reported that a man "strongly resembling" Ralph Nader was
crucified at the hands of angry New Hampshire Democrats. Pat Buchanan is
believed to have entered Florida with several hundred Jewish
followers shortly before communications with the state were lost.
Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne is believed to be mounting a
challenge to election results in Suffolk County, NY, where Constitution
Party candidate Howard Phillips edged him out for fifth place by just two
votes.
Alan Greenspan, who established the Fed-In-Exile in Paris last Friday, has
announced a freeze on the markets until order can be restored. He has
temporarily fixed the value of the U.S. dollar at $15 Canadian.
Citizens have been urged to stay in their homes and keep their lights off
until further notice.
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Bush Team Prepares 'Scorched-Earth Plan'
by Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post, Sunday, November 12, 2000 P. A21
<http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2830-2000Nov11.html>
Texas Gov. George W. Bush pulled ahead of Vice President Gore yesterday
by 17 votes in New Mexico, a key state in a Republican contingency plan if
Gore is declared the winner in Florida.
The battle to win 270 votes in the electoral college has taken on a
unique calculus. Florida remains crucial, but the close outcomes in New
Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon are critical in what one Republican
operative called a "scorched-earth strategy" GOP officials hope to avoid
implementing.
The strategy is to challenge Gore's close wins in Iowa, Wisconsin and,
perhaps, Oregon. If successful in Wisconsin with 11 electoral votes and
either Oregon or Iowa, with 7 each, Bush could then, under this scenario,
still win in the electoral college without Florida's 25 votes.
That depends on keeping New Mexico in the Bush column. If New Mexico
flips back to Gore, Bush would have to overturn the outcome in all three
other states--Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon--to make up for the loss of Florida.
Republicans may be forced to adopt their recount strategy before
Florida is resolved, if the dispute there continues for more than 10 days,
to meet the deadlines some states have for making formal recount requests.
"It is important . . . that there be some finality in the election
process," Baker told reporters Friday, adding, in what amounted to a
warning: "What if we insisted on recounts in other states that . . . are
very, very close?"
The degree of GOP concern over every electoral vote was reflected in
the decision to explore the possibility that Bush deserves one of four
electoral votes in Maine, one of only two states using a proportional vote
system.
Implementation of the recount strategy could be problematic for the
Bush campaign because both Iowa and Wisconsin appear to provide for some
recounting by hand, depending on the type of ballot used in each county.
The Bush campaign asked a federal court yesterday to block the hand recount
in Florida, saying that no consistent standard is used in the process.
As of yesterday, the situation in New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin and Iowa
was as follows:
* New Mexico. Gore's election night margin of 6,825 votes has
disappeared, and Bush now leads by 17 votes, 285,764 to 285,747. There are
an estimated 370 ballots left to be counted, but the trend with uncounted
ballots has been in Bush's favor.
It is possible in New Mexico to cast ballots in four different ways,
which is one of the reasons there has been so much confusion in the
tallying. In addition to traditional Election Day and absentee balloting,
the state provides for "early voting" during the 20-day period before
Election Day at shopping malls and other sites; and people who claim they
never received a requested absentee ballot can get "emergency ballots."
New Mexico Democrats are pessimistic about wresting back the state.
"What can I say?" said John Pound, a state co-chairman of Gore's campaign.
"I cannot challenge it. Whatever the numbers show, they show."
* Oregon. While suffering what may be a temporary setback in New Mexico,
Gore, who was behind in Oregon on election night, has pulled ahead, and may
have a large enough margin to avert an automatic recount. With 40,000 votes
still to be counted on Monday, Gore led by 5,756--702,218 to 696,462. A
recount is automatic if the difference falls below about 2,800 votes, or a
fifth of 1 percent of the total vote. Recounts in Oregon have a history of
affirming winners rather then overturning the outcome.
* Iowa. The Bush campaign has dispatched operatives to Iowa to see what
the chances are for a recount in a state where Gore was declared the winner
by 5,069 votes out of 1.3 million cast. An unknown number of absentee
ballots arriving by mail can be added to the count through Thursday or
Friday, depending on the rules in each county.
The GOP in Iowa is lining up volunteers in each of the state's
99 counties and poring over county election returns to see if there are any
unexpectedly large Democratic margins.
* Wisconsin. Republican officials are doing the preliminary work required
for a recount of the balloting that has made Gore the winner by 6,099 votes
out of 2.5 million cast.
A request for a recount requires an allegation of irregularities, and
the Wisconsin GOP has already filed a complaint alleging a number criminal
violations in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County. The county's Democratic
district attorney has agreed to investigate the allegations.
If Bush, who currently has 246 electoral college votes, were to lose
Florida, he would need to win a Wisconsin recount under any scenario that
would give him the 270 votes required to prevail. The hypothetical winning
combinations for Bush, with Wisconsin and without Florida, are:
* He wins Oregon and Iowa to get to 271 votes.
* He wins either Oregon or Iowa, along with New Mexico and one vote from
Maine, to get to 270.
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Suit challenges Cheney's status
Issue about electoral voting prompts residence question
11/14/2000
Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. � A federal lawsuit filed Monday says
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney can't legally claim Texas' 32
electoral votes because both are inhabitants of the state � a
violation of the Constitution's 12th Amendment.
The amendment bars a state's electors from voting for both a
president and vice president from the same state. Mr. Cheney
lived and worked in Dallas for eight years, but he switched his
voter registration to Wyoming in July to avoid any conflicts.
That's not good enough, says the suit by Lawrence Caplan, a Boca
Raton, Fla., lawyer. Just moving one's voter registration
doesn't meet the legal definition of being an "inhabitant," he
said. A Bush spokesman said that Mr. Cheney owns property in
Wyoming and that he was a legally registered voter in Wyoming
this election.
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How Democrats steal elections
Veterans of hand recounts describe techniques used to change outcome
By Jon Dougherty and David Kupelian
WorldNetDaily.com
The manual vote recounts being insisted on by Democratic operatives in Palm
Beach County, Fla., have been used for over 20 years to steal elections from
Republicans, claim several GOP veterans of hand-recount election-upsets.
According to Bob Haueter, chief of staff to the California Assembly
Republican Caucus, and an expert on manual recounts, a Democrat lawyer
intimately involved in "stealing" elections from Republicans through hand
recounts admitted to the process and even shared the techniques involved.
After Tuesday's vote and an automatic recount still left GOP nominee George
W. Bush ahead by a slim 288-vote margin, Palm Beach elections officials
decided that a manual recount of all 425,000 votes should be undertaken.
"What's happening in Florida is exactly the game plan laid out to me by an
attorney who represented the Democrats in a recount in California where they
stole a seat from us," former California Assemblyman Pat Nolan told
WorldNetDaily.
A staunch conservative legislator, Nolan served in the California Assembly
from 1978 until 1994, when he was convicted, along with several other
lawmakers, in a federal corruption probe. After spending a little over two
years in federal prison, he emerged to become president of Justice
Fellowship, the public policy arm of Watergate figure Chuck Colson's Prison
Fellowship Ministries. For the past four years, Nolan has worked with Colson
-- another fallen-but-reformed public figure -- to reform the criminal
justice system.
Regarding the 1980 California Assembly race between Republican Adrian Fondse
and Democrat Pat Johnston, Nolan recalled that the Republican won "by about
54 votes or so."
But after the election, Democrats "brought in their junkyard dog lawyers from
around the country," said Nolan, "and basically harassed the local registrar
-- got in their faces and demanded to handle ballots" -- which were of the
same type now in dispute in Palm Beach.
The same issue of "hanging chads -- the little squares in the punch cards --
was also an issue in Stockton," says Nolan. The Democrats' strategy, he says,
was to handle them as often as possible -- perhaps bending, crinkling or
otherwise altering them -- so that additional chads become displaced, thereby
disqualifying the ballot.
The result? In the Stockton election, Nolan said Democrats were successful in
getting the vote count reversed from a plus-54 win by Republicans to a
minus-17 loss.
"I vowed that I'd never let that happen again," Nolan said. "So I asked my
staff to track down the lawyer that headed up the team for the Democrats."
Haueter was, at that time, chief of staff for Nolan, and it was he who first
contacted attorney Tim Downs, who readily admitted the Democratic strategy
and even described the tactics to Nolan.
"When I first called him and explained to him who I was and why I was
calling, he chuckled and said, 'I wondered when you guys would get around to
calling me,'" Haueter said, adding that Downs told him -- "'I've taken
several seats from you across the United States.'"
"Downs told me, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, 'You get me within 100 votes and I
can steal any election,'" Haueter told WorldNetDaily.
Nolan subsequently hired Downs and "brought him out to train my staff in the
techniques they [Democrats] were using" so they could protect themselves
against future election-fraud victimization, Nolan said.
Nolan and Haueter said Downs described three basic tactics:
"The first rule is, you keep counting until you're ahead. And if that doesn't
put you ahead, you recount, re-recount -- you keep counting until you're
ahead. If you're behind, then you've got nothing to lose."
Second, Nolan said, "the more times those ballots are handled, the more
chance there is that chads will break loose" and hence disqualify the ballot.
Third, he said, "the minute you're ahead, you stop and declare yourself the
victor."
"After that, you don't want the ballots handled any more," Nolan said,
"because some of the chads for your candidate might break loose. While you're
behind it doesn't matter, but if you're ahead and more break off or become
disqualified for your candidate, that's a bad thing."
A favorite tactic, said Nolan, is to ask election officials for ballots,
"allegedly so they can look at it more closely." When operatives do, often
they will bend or crinkle ballots covertly in an effort to break another chad
loose and thus have the ballot thrown out.
"This whole process sounds like exactly what is going on in Florida," Nolan
said. "And the more times those ballots are handled, the more chances are
you'll break some of them [chads] loose."
Nolan referred to Fox News' Tony Snow's weekend interview with Bush campaign
representative and former Secretary of State James Baker, in which he asked
Baker why -- after each time election officials run ballots through
mechanical vote-tally machines -- there have been more votes counted or taken
away from both candidates.
"Baker didn't have an answer to that," Nolan said. "But the answer is,
because they've handled those ballots more times, breaking loose more of
those chads" -- those that perhaps weren't completely punched through.
"The tactics fit what [Downs] told me back in 1982 and 1983," Nolan said, who
added that he didn't know who Downs may have worked with using these tactics
recently.
WorldNetDaily attempted to reach Downs by phone on Sunday, but was
unsuccessful.
Following a mechanical recount over the weekend, Palm Beach election
officials awarded an additional 36 votes to Gore, while Bush lost three.
"A hand count of four selected precincts turned up enough additional votes
for Gore to prompt the Democratic majority on the county election commission
to order the hand recount in all 531 precincts," the Associated Press
reported.
Republicans, news accounts said, lodged "strenuous protests" and pledged to
file a lawsuit halting yet another recount of Palm Beach votes. That hearing
is scheduled for today.
Reports said nearly 30,000 ballots have already been rejected in Palm Beach
County because they had two or more holes punched for president, or because
computers could not detect any holes at all. Ballots with two votes also are
rejected in hand counts.
Corroborating Haueter's and Nolan's account is a parallel story by Los
Angeles-area political strategist Arnold Steinberg. In a National Review.com
piece titled "Beware of Hanging Chads," Steinberg asks, "Do you know what two
words will determine the Presidential election?" The chilling answer, he
said: "Hanging chads."
Steinberg, describing a 1980 congressional race between long-time incumbent,
Democrat James C. Corman, and Steinberg's client, Republican challenger Bobbi
Fiedler, recalls how after Fiedler's upset victory -- by a slim margin --
over the heavily favored Corman, the Democrats called for a hand recount.
"Democratic Party lawyers and recount specialists descended on the county
registrar's office," says Steinberg. "Each recount station had a government
employee to do the counting, flanked by one Democratic and one Republican
observer.
"The Democrats' agenda was, of course, to change the election result, and
they went about it systematically. At their urging, the recounting began with
Corman's strongest precincts, Fiedler's weakest. Their intention was to
recount ballots in those areas until the election outcome was reversed, and
then stop the recount. Similarly, today in Florida, the Gore people are
demanding hand recounts in their favored counties, where they would be most
likely to gain."
Just as important as the order in which the precincts are recounted, however,
is outright ballot tampering, says Steinberg.
"Their hired guns tried lots of tricks on Corman's behalf, but what I
remember most was the hanging chads. A chad is the perforated square (or
circle) on the ballot that a voter depresses with a pin to indicate his
preferred candidate. The chad hangs from the ballot if the voter didn't fully
depress it -- for instance, if an older person did not press firmly enough.
This matters because voter machines usually are not able to tabulate cards
with hanging chads.
"It often comes down to interpreting the voter's intention. Does the chad
hang 'strongly' -- i.e, detached only a little -- meaning that it is a
mistake that should not be counted? Or does it hang loosely -- i.e., mostly
detached -- as an intended vote would be?
"What my lawyers soon discovered was that the opposition would eyeball a
disputed ballot before picking it up to officially inspect it. If the hanging
chad indicated a vote for Fiedler, the lawyer for the other side picked up
the ballot ever so carefully, so he could argue that the voter really never
intended to vote for Fiedler. If the hanging chad was a Corman vote, the
lawyer picked up the ballot quite vigorously, so that the chad soon was no
longer hanging.
"'You see,' their guy would declare, 'that voter obviously intended to vote
for Corman.'"
Luckily, says Steinberg, "it didn't take long to figure out all the
opposition's tricks. I added more lawyers, more observers, and the bad guys
eventually caved. Bobbi Fiedler's victory was preserved. But it was a nasty
business."
Echoing Nolan's and Haueter's experience with manual-vote recounts, Steinberg
says, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
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Greening From Ear To Ear
Although Ralph Nader came up short in his bid to get 5 percent of the
vote in the presidential election, 18 other Green Party candidates
around the U.S. won their races last week. Greens now hold a total
of 72 elected offices in the country, mostly on city councils, school
boards, and commissions in California, Colorado, Minnesota, New
Mexico, and Wisconsin. The Greens hope Nader's high-profile bid for
the presidency will help the party put more members into local and
state offices. "We're encouraging people to run in a lot of
elections in the upcoming years, and we're going to keep pushing on
the issues we've been working on," said Winona LaDuke, Nader's
running mate. Meanwhile, to the north, Canada's Green Party is
arguing that it is being unfairly excluded from televised political
debates, just as Nader and his supporters argued in the U.S. in
recent months.
Christian Science Monitor, Brad Knickerbocker, 15 Nov 2000
<http://www.csmonitor.com/atcsmonitor/specials/wh2000/stories/nn15b.htm>
Toronto Globe and Mail, Joan Russow, 8 Nov 2000
<http://www.globeandmail.ca/gam/Environment/20001108/CORUSSOW.html>
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Linked stories:
********************
U.S. Government Allow Unabated Union Busting
<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10090>
From agricultural laborers to high-tech computer specialists, at
least 20,000 American workers are illegally fired every year for
attempting to organize unions -- and the U.S. government lets
employers get away with it.
********************
Adventures Through Inner Space
<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10088>
For the past decade, "psychonauts" have been crafting new
drugs, advancing psychedelic research, and expanding our
notions of consciousness. Pretty soon, we'll all be druggies.
********************
Libertarians Demand Neutral Observers in Recount
<http://news.excite.com/news/pr/001113/fl-libertarian-party>
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Libertarian Party
of Palm Beach County Florida today delivered a letter to the Supervisor
of Elections, Theresa LePore, demanding inclusion of Libertarian Party
observers in the manual recount of votes which the Canvassing Board voted
Saturday to undertake. The letter asked that the portions of the manual
recount which have already been carried out be repeated in the presence
of Libertarian observers.
********************
Getting ugly
<http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/14/sc_pols/index.html?CP=SAL&DN=664>
Battling in Florida courts, Bush calls on the same Southern strategists who
launched a smear campaign against McCain in South Carolina.
********************
U.S. Spy Office Dying, Group
Says <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40179,00.html?tw=wn20001115>
The National Reconnaissance Office, which operates U.S. spy
satellites, has been on the downswing for more than a decade, and a new
secrecy-shrouded agency ought to be created. That's the opinion of a
government commission.
********************
Butterfly ballots no problem for first-graders in mock vote
<http://ja.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20001114jbutter429.frm>
The contested "butterfly ballot" design at issue in Palm Beach
County, Florida, was put to the test by first-graders at Arnold
Elementary School in Michigan, who found it as easy as the ABCs.
What this says about Palm Beach voters is open to
interpretation. (11/15/00)
********************
Navy flying home 3,000 lost ballots
<http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/20001115_xex_navy_flying_.shtml>
After a scandal about the military's inability to get absentee
ballots to personnel and then collect them in a timely fashion,
the Navy is scrambling to fly thousands of ballots to the U.S.
in time to be counted. (11/15/00)
********************
The government gang battles over the goods
<http://antiwar.com/bock/b111500.html>
"What we are seeing in Florida rather closely resembles an
organized crime war between two rival 'families' who seek
control over certain rackets." (11/15/00)
********************
The Florida lawsuits
<http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/election/election2000.html>
The latest Florida recount opinions and legal documents
relating to the recount.
********************
U.S. Media: Egg On Their Faces?
<http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/stalemate.shtml>
As the U.S. election stalemate continues, voices around the world
are ridiculing America's media and lamenting its democracy.
********************
=====================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
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