Kagro at daily kos is sick of the umpire talk in the Sotomayor hearings. In fact, it was always a ridiculous argument, first forwarded by the disingenuous now Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. During his 2005 confirmation hearings, I wrote about how disingenuous Roberts was to use the analogy:

It is an interesting analogy Judge Roberts draws. And it seems to me to be an excellent argument for why Judge Roberts must answer the questions put to him by the Senate. As any baseball fan knows, umpires are not uniform in the delineation of the strike zone. Some are "hitters" umpires. Some are "pitchers" umpires. Some call the high strike. Some call the outside pitch.

And when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, it is important that we know what Judge Roberts' "strike zone" is. His record, the part that was not concealed by the Bush Administration, gives many of us pause regarding Judge Roberts' "strike zone." His stated antipathy for the right to privacy, for voting rights measures, for discrimination remedies, etc., demands followup. What does your "rulebook" say about these things Judge Roberts?

Senators Feinstein, Whitehouse, Schumer and Durbin all pointed out today that Chief justice Roberts was less than honest about what his judicial strike zone would be. In that sense, the umpire analogy still has its uses.

Is it me or are all these authoritarian conservatives just losing their nuts now? George Will's latest column in Washington Post (*sigh* again? Katherine Graham must be spinning in her grave. The same paper responsible for taking down the Nixon presidency is now serving up fact-free and bizarre rantings of regressive conservatives) jumps all over Russ Feingold for his proposed change to the 17th Amendment, ending gubernatorial appointments to Senate vacancies, and requiring special elections to fill the seats. Will thinks we'd be better off just getting rid of the 17th Amendment:

A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment with Feingold-McCain, more vandalism against the Constitution.

The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state's progressive tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do, that he is reluctant to tamper with the document but tamper he must because the threat to the public weal is immense: Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it.

What? Hold on...are you kidding me? We don't want no stinkin' voters deciding their representatives now? For those unfamiliar with the history, prior to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, the individual states' legislatures (not the voters) elected Senators to represent the states. It worked reasonably well until the Civil War, and then all hell broke loose:

This process worked without major problems through the mid-1850s, when the American Civil War was in the offing. Because of increasing partisanship and strife, many state legislatures failed to elect Senators for prolonged periods. For example, in Indiana the conflict between Democrats in the southern half of the state and the emerging Republican Party in the northern half prevented a Senate election for two years. The aforementioned partisanship led to contentious battles in the legislatures, as the struggle to elect Senators reflected the increasing regional tensions in the lead up to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the problems multiplied. In one case in the mid-1860s, the election of Senator John P. Stockton from New Jersey was contested on the grounds that he had been elected by a plurality rather than a majority in the state legislature.[1] Stockton defended himself on the grounds that the exact method for elections was murky and varied from state to state. To keep this from happening again, Congress passed a law in 1866 regulating how and when Senators were to be elected from each state. This was the first change in the process of senatorial elections. While the law helped, there were still deadlocks in some legislatures and accusations of bribery, corruption, and suspicious dealings in some elections. Nine bribery cases were brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906, and 45 deadlocks occurred in 20 states between 1891 and 1905, resulting in numerous delays in seating Senators. Beginning in 1899, Delaware did not send a senator to Washington for four years.

Now given all the games the Republicans have been playing in the two short years that they have not had the majority in Congress, does this seem like a smart thing to regress to? Of course, that could be Will's point/desire:

Although liberals give lip service to "diversity," they often treat federalism as an annoying impediment to their drive for uniformity. Feingold, who is proud that Wisconsin is one of only four states that clearly require special elections of replacement senators in all circumstances, wants to impose Wisconsin's preference on the other 46. Yes, he acknowledges, they could each choose to pass laws like Wisconsin's, but doing this "state by state would be a long and difficult process." Pluralism is so tediously time-consuming.

Irony alert: Feingold's amendment requiring elections to fill Senate vacancies will owe any traction it gains to Senate Democrats' opposition to an election to choose a replacement for Barack Obama. That opposition led to the ongoing Blagojevich-Burris fiasco.

By restricting the financing of political advocacy, the McCain-Feingold speech-rationing law empowers the government to regulate the quantity, timing and content of political speech. Thanks to Feingold, McCain and others, the First Amendment now, in effect, reads: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech unless it really, really wants to in order to guarantee that there will be only as much speech about the government as the government considers appropriate, and at times the government approves."

Now Feingold proposes to traduce federalism and nudge the Senate still further away from the nature and function the Framers favored. He is, as the saying goes, an unapologetic progressive, but one with more and more for which to apologize.

Oy, there's so much disingenuousness and anger there, it's hard to believe this joker passes as A. Very. Serious. Villager.

Open Left dismantles Will far better than I could.

It looks like FOX News and the wingnutosphere has made PA their battle ground. After the top video story turned out to be nothing at all, they went in this direction.

The Black Panthers are coming! Even though African Americans vote here 4-1...

We're all for fair elections. The right wingers suddenly got interested in it when John McCain got behind in the polls.

Greg Sargent has thoroughly debunked the story anyway:

Fox News and other conservatives on the Web are pushing hard on the story that two black panthers may be intimidating voters at a polling place in north Philadelphia. But an Obama campaign volunteer who's been on the scene since 6:30 AM this morning tells me in a phone interview that there's been absolutely no intimidation of voters at all today. And a Pennsylvania spokesperson for Obama said the two men aren't in any way affiliated with the campaign

"There was no fight, nothing," she says.

Fox News arrived on the scene at around that time and started interviewing people near the entrance. The building manager asked the Fox reporter to leave, she says, and he moved further from the entrance. That's where things now stand. "There has been no fighting, no voter intimidation at all," she said.

I touch wood everytime I say or write that it now looks as nearly certain as it can be that Obama will be the next President of the United States. But, of course, Obama is correct that all the polling in the world is meaningless if people decide that they can stay home on Election Day because Obama is going to win anyway. So get out there.

And while you're at it, make sure you know your rights and be on the look out for vote supression tricks. The Obama campaign has a new video on the GOP's voter supression campaign - because the lower the vote the better it is for Republicans. They thrive in a climate of disenfranchisement.

Despite all their accusations, even the McCain campaign admit they can't make the voter fraud claim stick:

For weeks, Republican leaders have warned that widely reported problems with fake voter registrations could result in a flood of phony votes in pivotal states.

But Ronald Michaelson, a veteran election administrator and member of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, said in an interview that he could not name a single instance in which this had occurred.

“Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can’t cite one, chapter and verse,” he said.

Which makes their accusations a form of fraud in its own right, doesn't it? One that's been falsely used to fuel "Republicans’ invocation of legal power to scrutinize voters, demands for U.S. Justice Department intervention and court orders, and criminal investigations."

But make no mistake - if the Republican's can't steal the election through voter suppression and voting irregularities they'll use that failure as an excuse to accuse Democrats of stealing it. The McCain campaign and Republicans have already trotted out dozens of excuses but there's only one reason McCain will lose - Obama is the better man for the job.

[ Find Your Polling Place | Voting Info For Your State | Know Your Voting Rights | Report Voting Problems ]

It's absolutely uncanny. Absolutely every accusation or smear that the McCain campaign hurls at Barack Obama comes back worse for McCain. I'm halfway seriously expecting a registration card for McCain from the '50s to turn up with "Communist" marked as party affiliation.

And after solemnly announcing that we were possibly on the brink of 'destroying the fabric of democracy' due to ACORN and their ties to Obama at the final debate, it turns out that McCain has his own little acorns...or at least, nuts, perpetrating REAL fraud that has stolen votes from REAL Americans, by registering voters as Republicans without their consent or knowledge and tearing up Democratic registrations in several states.

Transcripts below the fold:

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Greg Palast's book: Armed Madhouse is a good read.

Intimidation is a big part of Republican strategy to keep turn out low. Latinos should band together and show up to vote in groups of at least four so that they won't be intimidated when someone tries to deny them the right to legally vote. Republicans are deathly afraid of the Latino influence in elections ever since Sennsenbrenner tried to call them all felons and the radical right shot down any attempt to get an immigration deal. Why do you think Rove and Bush tried to pass that legislation?

Greg and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have a new article out in Rolling Stone called: Block The Vote:

This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

These 7 steps come from the website: Steal Back Your Vote. You can watch it too...

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I was on the conference call with the Obama campaign that addressed this issue:

The General Counsel of the Obama campaign is currently holding a media conference call to "Announce Major Action Taken Today To Address Illegal Conduct and Improprieties in the Sham "Anti-Fraud" Campaign Orchestrated By McCain-Palin and the RNC."

I have the letter they sent out. I'll post it soon. They are taking it very seriously. Digby has been asking to hear from David Iglesias about the phony election fraud charges that the McCain campaign has been pushing. They are trying to demand an FBI investigation of Voter Fraud against ACORN. This is actually all about registration and not actual voting. Digby says:

The US Attorney scandals and this ACORN nonsense are pieces of the same story.

If you remember the Attorney firing scandal revolved around the fact that people like David Iglesias would not go after phony voter fraud cases pushed by Republicans.

He spoke out on it.

David Iglesias says he's shocked by the news, leaked today to the Associated Press, that the FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before the election.

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again," Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. "Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic." In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted -- one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

Iglesias, who has been the most outspoken of the fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI's investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a "boogeyman" out of voter fraud.

And he added that it "stands to reason" that the investigation was launched in response to GOP complaints. In recent weeks, national Republican figures -- including John McCain at last night's debate -- have sought to make an issue out of ACORN's voter-registration activities.

Whenever Republicans bring up anything about Voter fraud it's always targeted to disenfranchise voters and not protect our voting rights.

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Accusations of voter fraud by the pro-Obama progressive group ACORN. It's the subject all the rightwing bloggers are going nuts over and now they've been joined in their prosecutory zeal by the Wall Street Journal. But looking closely at the outrage, it becomes obvious very quickly that if there is a problem at all then, "the more accurate accusation may be voter-registration fraud -- for which there appears to be plenty of checks in place to guarantee it doesn't turn into some actual voter fraud."

The McCain-Palin campaign is being careful in its wording, limiting its direct accusations while hinting at far more. A current fundraising email under Sarah Palin's signature says:

The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states. ACORN's political action committee has endorsed Barack Obama and Senator Obama himself has said, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." The Obama Campaign even paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN affiliate for "get out the vote activity." And now we find out that ACORN is suspected of voter registration fraud.

... We've always known the Obama-Biden Democrats will do anything to win this November, but we didn't know how far their allies would go. The Obama-supported, far-left group, ACORN, has been accused of voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states.

The media, in the main, are only too happy to pile on - as this compilation of reports by a rightwing YouTuber illustrates:

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  Michigan Messenger:

Last week we reported about Republican plans to use home foreclosure lists to block voters from the polls after James Carabelli, chair of the Macomb County Republican Party, told Michigan Messenger that on election day Republican volunteers will "have a list of foreclosed homes and make sure people aren't voting from those addresses."

Republican leaders have since disavowed plans to use foreclosure lists as part of their plan to challenge the eligibility of some voters, but an attorney for the party, Eric Doster, did confirm that the party would use returned mail to challenge voters based on residency. As veteran Republican activist Allen Raymond told Michigan Messenger in a recent interview, holding down Democratic turnout is a key part of Republican strategy for victory in November.

Raymond knows about Republican campaign tactics. For almost a decade he managed campaigns for Republicans running for state and national office. In the 2002 New Hampshire elections, he ran a phone-jamming operation aimed at blocking elderly people from arranging rides to the polls, an illegal action that he says was approved by the highest levels of the party. He spent three months in federal prison. Earlier this year Raymond published a book about his life and work as a Republican operative, titled "Confessions of a Republican Operative: How to Rig an Election."

As for our report that the Michigan GOP planned to use foreclosure lists to block likely Democratic voters, Raymond said: "It's a very good tactic. It works."

"It is actually a very smart thing to do," he went on, "particularly in this climate with so many foreclosures."

For Republicans, he said, targeting the foreclosures would be a cost-effective and "probably" legal method of reducing Democratic votes.

If he were still in the election business, he said, "I'd be doing that all day long."

Sneaky.  The majority of foreclosed homes are the ones with sub-prime loans held by lower income families, who are more likely to be Democrats.  So challenge them and suddenly that pledge for "honest and open elections" is so much easier:

In anticipation of problems to come, John McCain's campaign announced Monday the "Honest and Open Election Committee" to troubleshoot voter issues on Nov. 4.

In the wake of the recount in 2000, campaigns have been quick to the draw on recognizing - and solving - problems with voter access. To be sure, there are plenty of issues, such as needing identification to get a ballot.[..]

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said there were a number of issues that required advance legwork, including the proper handling of absentee ballots by military personnel deployed overseas.

Another issue is the last-minute decisions for polling places to stay open later. Rogers said the committee will work with precincts to determine under which circumstances an extension should be granted as well as agree upon a judge to handle such claims.

"You could pre-approve some judges," Rogers said, "so they're not going to somebody who's in somebody's pocket."

I'm sure everyone will be content with McCain's pre-approved judges, right?

UPDATE:  Michigan Dems and the Obama Campaign Sue for Foreclosure-Related Vote-Caging

How are these things still legal?

WaPo: (h/t miss kitty)

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier [formerly known as Diebold] and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

It never ceases to amaze me that eight years after the whole Florida debacle, and four years since the shady Ohio vote count, that virtually nothing has been done to fix all these voting "irregularities." It's really inexcusable.

For an idea of how easily these electronic machines are hacked, see HBO's Hacking Democracy.

I've been all over the Indiana Voter suppression ruling by the Supreme Court ever since they started hearing the case. I call it the Preemptive doctrine on Voting Rights.

The Great Voter purge shall begin. The Indiana Voter ID case is the ultimate Republican tool to purge the rolls of voters that overwhelmingly will vote for a Democratic nominee. Indiana anti-voter Law produces first casualties: Indiana Nuns in their 80’s and 90’s I haven't watched Moyers yet because I need some time off this weekend like all of us do, but TP posted this clip:

Commenting on the decision on last night’s “Bill Moyers Journal,” legal scholar Jeffery Toobin explained that the “real agenda” behind voter ID laws is “to help Republicans”:

I thought it was a bad decision, but a predictable one because it was a very clear attempt by Republicans to stop Democrats from voting. I don’t think there’s any doubt about what the motivation was of that law. … The real agenda was to help Republican.

That says it all. I'm working with the ACLU to map out a strategy on this ruling and will keep you informed.

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Here's your first case of voter disenfranchisement from Indiana's new draconian anti-voter law.

Judge Roberts must be so proud:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

Nonetheless, she said, the convent will make a "very concerted effort" to get proper identification for the nuns in time for the general election. "We're going to take from now until November to get them out and get this done. You can't do this like school kids on a bus," she said. "I wish we could."

It breaks my heart.

I've talked about this case at length with Rachel Maddow and anyone else that would listen, So has the ACLU, Digby and many others. Let's see what impact it has on Indiana's Democratic Primary. Keep an eye out, but it will really hurt big time in the general election. That was the point of this case and the Supreme Court once again shows its face as nothing but a purely partisan organization.

The Great Voter purge shall begin....

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws. n a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats andcivil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to deter fraud.
It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush mirrored.

And a very important point:

The case concerned a state law, passed in 2005, that was backed by Republicans as a way to deter voter fraud. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed the law as unconstitutional and called it a thinly veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters — those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats.

There is little history in Indiana of either in person voter fraud — of the sort the law was designed to thwart — or voters being inconvenienced by the law's requirements.

via the Scotus Blog:Court rejects voter ID challenge; no new grants

Here's the Scotus opinion pdf.

This Dissent by EVANS is very good.

EVANS, Circuit Judge, dissenting. Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic. We should subject this law to strict scrutiny--or at least, in the wake of Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, (1992), something akin to "strict scrutiny light"--and strike it down as an undue burden on the fundamental right to vote...read on

Here’s the face of the Voter ID case in Indiana: “Preemptive doctrine” on voting rights

Supreme Court looks to be 5-4 to uphold Voting ID rules and purge the voting rolls…

I was interviewed by the wonderful Rachel Maddow on Air America yesterday to talk about one of the most important cases that the Supreme Court is going to rule on in JUNE which could quite possibly change the course of the 2008 election and many more to follow. The Indiana Voter ID case. I tried to stay out of the weeds and focus on the impact it will have in the future.

Take a listen... Download | play

I understand that the primaries have taken up most of the space for our media, but we need to see this for what it is. A massive attempt of voter suppression by the right-wing elites that will hurt the Democratic Party for decades.

The Scotus Blog is covering it....Rockridge Nation: "This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a critical voting rights case, and gave indications that it might allow states to impose barriers to voting that would disproportionately harm voters who are poor, elderly, disabled, or racial or linguistic minorities...read on"

Digby on "Caging Conservatives":

If there was any evidence of massive voter fraud, perhaps such a thing could be arguably necessary. But there isn't. In fact, after all the efforts of the Ashcroft and Gonzales Justice Departments --- even the firing of US Attorneys for failing to bring voter fraud cases against Democratic politicians --- they simply couldn't make a case that there is any kind of systemic fraud requiring that the state disenfranchise large numbers of people who might not have photo ID or other documentation. It just isn't happening. The conservatives have institutionalized electoral cheating...read on"

Abbi Tatton of CNN takes a look at Online Voter Registration. MoveOn has some online tools to a help you. Check your status via VotePoke.org and register here.