The Fraudulent Fraud Squad The incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights:

[...]

The death of ACVR says a lot about the Republican strategy of raising voter fraud as a crisis in American elections. Presidential adviser Karl Rove and his allies, who have been ghostbusting illusory dead and fictional voters since the contested 2000 election, apparently mounted a two-pronged attack. One part of that attack, at the heart of the current Justice Department scandals, involved getting the DoJ and various U.S. attorneys in battleground states to vigorously prosecute cases of voter fraud. That prong has failed. After exhaustive effort, the Department of Justice discovered virtually no polling-place voter fraud, and its efforts to fire the U.S. attorneys in battleground states who did not push the voter-fraud line enough has backfire. Even if Attorney General Gonzales declines to resign his position, his reputation has been irreparably damaged.

But the second prong of this attack may have proven more successful. This involved using ACVR to give "think tank" academic cachet to the unproven idea that voter fraud is a major problem in elections. That cachet would be used to support the passage of onerous voter-identification laws that depress turnout among the poor, minorities, and the elderly--groups more likely to vote Democratic. Where the Bush administration may have failed to nail illegal voters, the effort to suppress minority voting has borne more fruit, as more states pass these laws, and courts begin to uphold them in the name of beating back waves of largely imaginary voter fraud.

[...]

recommended reading, as well as Greg Palast's latest: The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Empire...[NOTE: on previewing l find the article has suddenly disappeared from his web site...l'll leave the link, just in case it comes back]

here's the opening paragraph:

This Monica revealed something hotter -- much hotter -- than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One....And the Committee members didn't even know it.

Goodling testified that Gonzales' Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: Sampson denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in `caging' voters" in 2004.

Huh?? Tim Griffin? "Caging"???

[...]

and links to the emails that were part of the article:

caging e/m

e/m to goodling from griffin

never clear your cache/history too soon, eh.

kudos to you and the folks at ePM for the great work you're doing on this issue.

lTMF'sA

 

meet the new boss, same as the old boss...