This is good news. Vic Rawl has filed a formal protest of the election results in South Carolina that elevated an unknown unemployed veteran to primary frontrunner.

Via MSNBC:

Rawl says experts who have analyzed the data say they've noticed irregularities in the vote totals. He planned an afternoon news conference in Charleston.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn says he thinks someone put Greene up as a shell candidate to embarrass the Democratic Party. But Greene insists he saved for two years to pay the $10,000 filing fee.

I hope the DOJ and FBI is investigating the voting machines, too. Rawl will have a high barrier to climb, since the ES&S voting machines do not save an audit trail.

via That Colored Fellas : By La Shawn Barberella

The execution of this poor woman by ‘activist judges’, abortion-on-demand crazed lesbos at Planned Parenthood and Black Liberals who hate me but still read my blog, has now increased demand from the cable networks for my on-air insight and analysis! Such a reflection of my increasing popularity has forced me to hire the veteran publicist/media advisor Bumble Ward, who also represents the famous Director Tim Burton.

With my many appearances on MSNBC’s Connected Coast To Coast, I can now tell you my dear readers that CNN is now the only anti-American cable news network left! read on

CIA Shakeup

David Kaplan and Kevin Whitelaw have more pieces of the puzzle, and provide some intriguing insights about the odd departure of super-spy Stephen Kappes. This just appeared in Monday's issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Here is the enticing opening to a very interesting article:

To those who worked with him, Stephen Kappes seemed the perfect choice to lead the covert side of the CIA in the midst of the war on terrorism. Appointed in June, Kappes, a former marine, is a veteran CIA case officer who served in dangerous and difficult postings in Moscow and Pakistan. More recently, he reported directly to President Bush as the CIA's point man in secret high-stakes negotiations with Libya that ended the rogue state's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

So last week, many CIA insiders were astonished when Kappes became an early casualty under the rule of Porter Goss, the recently appointed director of central intelligence. Goss, himself a former CIA case officer who recently chaired the House Intelligence Committee, came into his job in September with a mandate to reform a troubled agency blamed for a series of grave lapses before the September 11 attacks and the Iraq war.

But while Goss was widely expected to shake the place up, the departure of Kappes and his deputy, Michael Sulick, stunned intelligence veterans in Washington, who saw the pair as the most qualified team to lead the CIA's Directorate of Operations in years. "The planets lined up," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran who ran the agency's arming of Afghan rebels in the Soviet war. "You had the right guys in the right job at the right time." Ironically, the two men shared Goss's critique of the CIA's shortcomings.

Says a former top CIA official who worked with Kappes: "These guys weren't in denial that 9/11 and Iraq were intelligence failures."

From AMericablog via Newsmax

Rehnquist's Clever Boost for Bush

When Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist announced in late October that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, we took the news sadly.

Now that the election has taken place and the dust has settled, we think the clever veteran of the Court and Beltway politics may have timed his announcement to give George Bush a small boost before Election Day.

Rehnquist could have waited a few days, until after the election was over -- as John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, did to announce her breast cancer.

As NewsMax reader Miguel Tuas first pointed out to us, Rehnquist's timing was impeccable.

Though Rehnquist did not say he planned to step down, many media commentators said the ailing chief justice, now 80 years old, may have to leave the court to attend to his health.

And that suddenly injected the judiciary -- and the number of Supreme Court appointments the next president may have to make -- into the presidential campaign.

Can you imagine Kerry's potential court picks: Dershowitz? Tribe? Estrich?

Thankfully, we don't have to.

As the story of the arrest of Professor Henry Gates has unfolded, this was bound to happen. Apparently, the Boston Police Department now has their own Mark Fuhrman:

A Boston police officer allegedly sent a mass e-mail using a disgraceful racial slur in referring to Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., prompting the commissioner to move immediately to fire the cop, the Herald has learned.

Officer Justin Barrett, 36, a two-year veteran assigned to District B-3, was placed on administrative leave pending a termination hearing yesterday afternoon. When a supervisor confronted Barrett about the e-mail - in which he called Gates a “jungle monkey” - he admitted to being the author, according to officials.

Police Commissioner Edward Davis immediately stripped the cop of his gun and badge, according to officials. Barrett, who could not immediately be reached, has no prior disciplinary history. Read on...

I've tried to understand the minds of scum like this, but it only ends in excruciating pain -- every time. With all the racist hate being spewed on right wing radio and television, it's no wonder guys like Barrett are worked up to the point where they can no longer control their hatred. I guess this would be another one of those "teachable moments?"

They caused a stir when they refused to broadcast a Ted Koppel memorial for our troops in Iraq without even seeing it, will now air a Kerry attack piece.

Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film
Sinclair, with reach into many of the nation's homes, will preempt prime-time shows. Experts call the move highly unusual.

By Elizabeth Jensen, Times Staff Writer

With the news of his friend Brian Beutler’s shooting, and after spending some time with the family of an Iraqi war veteran from Massachusetts who came safely home only to be killed in a Texas bar, Murray Waas contemplates RFK’s words on violence.

Our buddy, Cenk Ugyur of The Young Turks appeared on CNN's Headline News yesterday to defend Wes Clark's statement about John McCain's experience with the brave Ben Ferguson, who never saw a conflict he was afraid to send other people's sons to. The purposeful and obtuse willingness on the part of CNN/HLN's Mike Galanos to further the narrative started by his colleague Rick Sanchez that Clark was "swiftboating" McCain by questioning his experience, his patriotism and his sacrifice as a veteran and POW is stunning. There's not even an attempt to see it from the other side. Note even the chyron headline is that Clark is questioning McCain's "service," a shorthand that spins it in a far more malevolent way.

Cenk does what I think all of us have to do when confronted with this kind of illogical and intractable meme, especially when you're outmanned by both the pearl-clutching media host and the indignant conservative "balance": he laughs at it.

FERGUSON: You have a man that was shot down, stayed in captivity as a POW for five years and your guy-if you want to talk about experience-had 147 days in the Senate before he decided he wanted to be President of the United States of America. So it's pretty dumb for Wesley Clark to go out there and yes, it ticked off everyone in the military because this man-I mean, I'm sorry, being shot down, to say that doesn't qualify you to be President-this man has been around war, been in actual war zones while Wesley Clark was sitting in an air-conditioned room, telling people what to do with NATO, so I don't know if he's exactly the right guy to go out there.

It ticked off everyone in the military? Really? Care to back that up, big man? And what's with the disrespect of Clark's service? A retired general who spent his career in command doesn't merit the respect you demand for a pilot? Was he in an air-conditioned room during Vietnam? Bosnia? Not so much. Maybe little radio talk show hosts sitting in the comfort of their air-conditioned studios might want to think twice before castigating any military man for his service.

UPDATE: Cenk reminds me that there was a second part to the segment after the commercial break and you can see both parts here. Cenk got in some good digs too.

Unbelievable. Wesley Clark just destroys the media narrative that being a prisoner of war is somehow the "experience" necessary to be Commander in Chief, much to the dumbfounding of host Bob Schieffer. It's a fantastic appearance--much like this earlier one that Jesse at GroupNews recounts:

The media simply couldn't argue the POINT, which Clark made clear without saying word one directly about them to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, that they have been lazy goof offs who are brutally biased for McCain, against Obama, and are not doing their damn jobs. Or they would already have reported this obviously well-grounded assessment/interpretation about McCain's national security ability -- "Largely Untested and Untried" -- over which Clark was taking them to school. They couldn't argue the actual point. It was that clear, that obvious, that elegant a takedown. In effect, Clark's hit on McCain took out two targets with one shot.

So how does CNN characterize this tête-à-tête? That Wesley Clark was SWIFTBOATING John McCain!

Rick Sanchez's lead-in to his next segment just now on CNN:

"Wesley Clark tried to Swiftboat John McCain today."

I'm liveblogging. He goes on to say:

"It will reverberate for weeks. Wes Clark tried to diss McCain's military record, that his service doesn't qualify him to be president."

Rick Sanchez is mad.

No, not mad...just a huge partisan hack. Now that "swift-boating" has entered the vernacular, let us remember that the original SwiftBoat Veterans for "Truth" were for the most part neither in their hope to take down Kerry's candidacy. Has Wesley Clark in some way made any untrue allegations in saying that being a POW and a non-combat era fighter pilot does not necessarily qualify you for the highest elected office in the land?

Iraq veteran and political activist Rafael Noboa adds his 2 cents here.