Kolesar
Kolesar's JournalFederal judge rips Jon Husted for unconstitutional change to Ohio election rules
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
In a scathing 17-page ruling (Read the full ruling in the Document viewer below), U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley said a directive on counting provisional ballots that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted issued on Nov. 2 was "a flagrant violation of a state elections law" that could disenfranchise voters.
"The surreptitious manner in which the secretary went about implementing this last minute change to the election rules casts serious doubt on his protestations of good faith," Marbley wrote.
...
Marbley noted numerous times that Husted, a Republican, set the new rules at 7 p.m. on a Friday.
"Ohio voters reasonably expect that the secretary of Ohio will abide by the General Assembly’s laws in administering a federal election," Marbley wrote. "For an executive of the state to (flout) state law in arbitrarily reassigning a poll worker’s statutory duty to a voter, with the result being disenfranchisement of the voter, is ‘fundamentally unfair and constitutionally impermissible.’"
Marbley, nominated to be federal judge by President Bill Clinton in 1997, has ruled on numerous issues regarding Ohio election laws in recent months. He has repeatedly stressed the importance of voting rights. "There’s nothing more important than the franchise and the right to vote," Marbley said during a hearing in June. "I grew up in the Jim Crow South and still remember the various mechanisms that were used to disenfranchise voters."
...
Read more: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/11/federal_judge_rips_husted_for.html
Attorney Subodh Chandra chided Husted for wasting public money in an appeal of Judge Marbley's ruling. Chandra is representing the homeless. They are a group that needs political representation. Huge numbers of Ohioans have been displaced in the "mortgage crisis". Drivers license requirements are obviously designed to prevent them from voting.
I don't know if the federal Department of Justice can go after Jim Crow Husted.
The ruling is viewable at the link for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
MANY SAD RETURNS TODAY FOR THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION
SPENT more than $11.7 million against President Barack Obama - NRA defeated
SPENT more than $1 million against Sen. Sherrod Brown, OHIO - NRA defeated
SPENT more than $626,000 against Sen. Bill Nelson, FLORIDA - NRA defeated
SPENT more than $610,000 against Tim Kaine, Virginia (U.S. Senate) - NRA defeated
SPENT more than $341,000 against Sen. Claire McCaskill, MISSOURI - NRA defeated
SPENT more than $320,000 against Tammy Baldwin, WISCONSIN (U.S. Senate) - NRA defeated
SPENT more than $48,000 against Chris Murphy, Connecticut (U.S. Senate) - NRA defeated
What additional evidence is needed for elected officials and the media to finally discard the myth of the NRA's power to influence elections?
--Brady Campaign/Facebook feed
Kucinich:FirstEnergy Incompetence Leaves 127,000 Residents without Power
Cleveland, OH, Nov 1 -
Cleveland, OH (November 1, 2012) -- Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today released the following statement concerning FirstEnergy’s failure to return power to the people of Northeast Ohio. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that 127,000 area residents are still without power after FirstEnergy sent 200 linemen and nearly half its support staff to assist sister companies on the East Coast. Cleveland Public Power, by comparison, has only 1000 households remaining without power.
“FirstEnergy’s failure is frustrating on multiple levels and it raises serious questions about management of this Fortune 500 corporation. One hundred twenty seven thousand residents waiting in the cold is clear proof that FirstEnergy is unable to respond to a system wide emergency. With every merger and every expansion, FirstEnergy cuts staff to increase profits. They have cut so deeply, they are unable to respond to an emergency, leaving consumers to pay the price. We should not forget that this is the same company that caused a major blackout along the entire east coast because it was too cheap to maintain its tree trimming responsibilities.
“Secondly, FirstEnergy’s problem was foreseeable. Many of the residents who have called my office have raised questions about motivations. We had plenty of warning that a major storm was coming. FirstEnergy had time to send nearly 50 percent of its support staff to the East Coast. Why then did FirstEnergy not secure support staff from unaffected states before the emergency began? Media reports indicate FirstEnergy has requested support, but only after residents have been without power for days.
“FirstEnergy has a long and continued track record of incompetence. The company has a culture of cutting corners in order to increase profits. This is a company that owns nuclear power plants with abysmal safety records. We put our lives in the hands of a company that puts profits before safety.
“While I hope that all residents will soon have power, it is well established that global climate change will make severe weather more common. FirstEnergy needs to be held accountable. The people of Northern Ohio deserve better,” said Kucinich. “
Ohio S.O.S. Jon Husted forbids BOEs from calling or emailing voters about absentee ballot mistakes
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted issued a new, mind boggling directive on Thursday that adds even more confusion and potential slow-down to the process of handling absentee ballots.
According to newly-issued Directive 2012-48, Boards of Election wishing to notify a voter of mistakes on his/her absentee ballot can only do so “in writing by first class mail”. ”Notification may not be made via telephone, email, facsimile” or any other means.
This is a stark change from the policy under SOS Jennifer Brunner, who issued a directive in 2008 advising boards to “simultaneously use both email and first class mail” and which allowed telephone communication when other means were “impracticable or impossible”
The very first question on an absentee ballot request form is for Phone Number, which the form says is “Recommended”. And the online request form asks for both phone number and emails address. If they aren’t allowed to use the information to help speed up the process and help quickly notify voters of mistakes on their ballots, then why bother asking for it?
PlunderBund (http://s.tt/1pwM1)
We lost my little brother this morning
He had flu like symptoms for days and he was just staying in his room and waiting it out. He had been on anti-seizure medication for a year and might have been on other medications. He quit antidepressants a few years ago.
Youth brought him dyslexia and epilepsy. He was bullied. His learning disabilities and social phobia made his work prospects poor, but he toughed it out at jobs earning barely over minimum wage. Living with family helped. There was no money in the budget for good medicine. His orthopedic surgery three years ago was paid by hospital "foundation" funds; that's a bad way to run a health care system. I don't recall where he got treated when he did get treated. There certainly weren't a lot of doctors who had a lot of time for him, so he didn't go in. I suspect a drug interaction killed him.
Gone at 51. My mother grieves.
I am the one in ten
A number on a list
I am the one in ten
Even though I don`t exist
Nobody knows me
Though I`m always there
A statistic, a reminder
Of a world that doesn`t care
--UB40
I know the people on this forum care, though. I've seen it on "the threads". Thanks for your thoughts.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted calls for uniform early voting hours
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Republican directed Ohio's 88 county boards of election to adhere to these hours of operation during the 35-day early voting period: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the first three weeks, and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. for the final two weeks.
But there will be no weekend voting when early voting begins on Oct. 2, Husted said.
"The bottom line is the antagonists have made an issue about the fact that voters aren't being treated fairly, that they aren't being treated the same," Husted said during a hastily called news conference at his office. "Today we're treating voters everywhere the same."
The secretary's order has hardly squelched the controversy as Democrats immediately issued calls of injustice over the lack of weekend voting hours, a crucial voting period for Democrats during the last presidential election in 2008.
Read more: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/08/ohio_secretary_of_state_jon_hu_2.html
The New York Times editorial stung Husted so he responded by eliminating "early voting" on the weekend before the election. Before this decision, Husted had been permitting rural and suburban counties to have longer hours than the voting hours in our urban counties. The 'pukes had been operating on a loophole that the SOS could break the tie when boards of elections split evenly between two Democrats and two Republicans over extended hours.
Suffrage takes another hit. John Brown's body is rolling in his grave.
Connie Schultz: Catholic Leaders Must Dial Down the Rhetoric
As a non-Catholic, I wrestled with an internal conflict over the birth control battle of the bishops.
Part of me has been so outraged over this all-male effort to undermine women's reproductive rights that I can barely string together words that are appropriate for family newspapers. The other part of me has wondered whether my not being Catholic renders this mess a whole lot of none of my business.
As of this week, conflict resolved.
On Monday, Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio — where Rick Santorum gave his I-almost-won primary speech earlier this year — announced it was canceling all student health care insurance because the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires coverage for "women's health services."
Translation: Blame the harlots.
"We encourage you to decide how you are going to provide for accidents or illnesses requiring visits to physicians, health clinics, or the hospital emergency room while you are a student here," the university said in a statement.
In a news conference, the university's president, the Rev. Terence Henry, said the Diocese of Steubenville had hired the top-gun law firm Jones Day to file suit against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Barack Obama's administration. The diocese joins 11 similar lawsuits, all of them filed by Catholic organizations.
"Under no circumstances can Catholics be both in compliance with this new law and at the same time live that faith that we believe," Henry said. "This is not just a Catholic issue. It is an issue for all people. It attacks our basic religious freedom. ... This is a do-or-die issue for Americans."
And with that, I am done with any internal conflict over my non-Catholic status in America.
If the Roman Catholic Church wants to make this about all Americans, then this American is unequivocal: Access to affordable contraception saves lives, and there is no constitutional right to discriminate against the women who need it.
You don't have to be Catholic to be offended by a relentless campaign to cast sexually active females as God-defying, wanton women. And you don't have to be a woman to object to the bishops' attempts to keep women enslaved by their menstrual cycles.
...more...
Read the rest of this column by the Pulitzer Prize winning wife of Senator Sherrod Brown.
She cites some really incendiary quotes by clergy members who should show more discretion, to put it mildly:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/connie-schultz/catholic-leaders-must-dial-down-the-rhetoric.html
I could not figure out how to edit this down to a few paragraphs and still have it "work", so I made the excerpt longish. Besides, she is a friend of mine 
and I am driving traffic to Creators' Syndicate.
Stop the Nuclear Industry Welfare Program by Senator Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander
Stop the Nuclear Industry Welfare Program
By Sen. Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander
April 16th, 2012 12:11 PM
This nation is facing a $15 trillion national debt, and there is no shortage of opinions about how to move toward deficit reduction in the federal budget. One topic you will not hear discussed very often on Capitol Hill is the idea of ending one of the oldest American welfare programs -- the extraordinary amount of corporate welfare going to the nuclear energy industry.
Many in Congress talk of getting 'big government off the back of private industry.' Here's an industry we'd like to get off the backs of the taxpayers.
As a senator who is the longest-serving independent in Congress, and as the president of an independent and non-partisan budget watchdog organization, we do not necessarily agree on everything when it comes to energy and budget policy in the United States. But one thing we strongly agree on is the need to end wasteful subsidies that prop up the nuclear industry. After 60 years, this industry should not require continued and massive corporate welfare. It is time for the nuclear power industry to stand on its own two feet.
Nuclear welfare started with research and development. According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, since 1948 the federal government has spent more than $95 billion (in 2011 dollars) on nuclear energy R&D. That is more than four times the amount spent on solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biofuels, and hydropower combined.
But federal R&D was not enough; the industry also wanted federal liability insurance too, which it got back in 1957 with the Price-Anderson Act. This federal liability insurance program for nuclear plants was meant to be temporary, but Congress repeatedly extended it, most recently through 2025. Price-Anderson puts taxpayers on the hook for losses that exceed $12. 6 billion if there is a nuclear plant disaster. When government estimates show the cost for such a disaster could reach $720 billion in property damage alone, that's one sweetheart deal for the nuclear industry!
R&D and Price-Anderson insurance are still just the tip of the iceberg. From tax breaks for uranium mining and loan guarantees for uranium enrichment to special depreciation benefits and lucrative federal tax breaks for every kilowatt hour from new plants, nuclear is heavily subsidized at every phase. The industry also bilks taxpayers when plants close down with tax breaks for decommissioning plants. Further, it is estimated that the federal costs for the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste could be as much as $100 billion.
...
Please follow the story so that you can use the embedded links that the authors have provided.
Michael Moore dot com!
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/stop-the-nuclear-industry-welfare-program
This content is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Iraqi defector ‘Curveball’ details lies that led to war
Source: The Raw Story
“Curveball,” the Iraqi defector who fed the Bush Administration bogus claims of mobile weapons labs being developed by Saddam Hussein — claims that were later gussied up and presented to the United Nations as incontrovertible fact — is finally explaining the tall tale that helped launch America’s military.
“My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime’s oppression,” he recently told a filmmaker with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
...
Al-Janabi’s frightening tales of a reconstituted biological weapons program were so integral to the Bush Administration’s case for war that they became the basis of General Colin Powell’s testimony to the U.N. Powell has since walked that testimony back by explaining that the intelligence provided by al-Janabi was “shaky,” but remained the best information they had at the time.
Powell’s former top aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, has spent years covering for Powell on that point, insisting that his former boss was misled by Vice President Dick Cheney, who allegedly cherry-picked intelligence to support the Administration’s decision to invade.
...
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/03/iraqi-defector-curveball-details-lies-that-led-to-war/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=cbc72ff3e3-4_3_124_3_2012&utm_medium=email
This is the man who gave Bush the issue he used to get "elected" in 2004. The pathetic American media displayed no skepticism and refused to puncture the obvious half truths and white lies coming from the neoconservatives.
Japan recalls its whaling fleet from the Southern Ocean
Source: Radio Australia News / ABC
Japan's Fisheries agency has told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the country's whaling fleet is heading home, after catching less than a third of its quota in the Antarctic.
...
The Sea Shepherd conservation group which harassed the fleet in the Antarctic says it's a massive victory for whales.
Despite receiving a special budget boost of 31.9 million US dollars to fend off Sea Shepherd, the Japanese whalers were repeatedly obstructed by the activists.
The Australian government says it welcomes Japan's decision to recall its whaling fleet from the Southern Ocean.
It says it remains opposed to commercial whaling, including Japan's so called "scientific" whaling program.
The Australian government says Australia will continue its efforts to achieve a permanent end to whaling through the International Court of Justice.
...end...
Read more: http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/201203/3449811.htm?desktop
That last sentence is the tricky part. The law certainly is not clear on the issue. Hence, the animal rights activists have to resort to "direct action".
These guys could have been better neighbors.
Let's jam to the Hoodoo Gurus:
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Cleveland
Current location: Ohiohiohiohio
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