NH Phone Jamming....interesting insights...church & anti-Kerry literature

[_dynamicdems]

NH and Ohio have a common problem: foxes running the hen house. The levels of corruption in both state governments are insidious and they are very difficult to prove legally, especially when the enforcement of law is controlled by partisan politics. The phone jamming case in NH gives insight to how these people operate and it is disgusting. The tendrils of corruption reach far and they are almost impossible to extricate.

When the wife of the head US Attorney for the District of NH is handing out anti-Kerry/pro-Bush literature at her church (very legally questionable in itself) and is also on the GOP payroll as a "consultant," it is no wonder that the phone jamming case against republican "operatives" has been thwarted and stalled at every turn.

Voter fraud is only the tip of the iceberg. The bottom line is not that the GOP uses unethical and illegal methods to influence elections, but that they have a network in place to squash legal recourse in the aftermath. This is why it was impossible to successfully contest the 2004 election results in Ohio.

Our government is infected by parasites and the purging of these blood-sucking vermin is going to be a long and arduous process. Justice will trump corruption in the end, but this network has been in place for a long time and it is going to take a long time to extricate. Let's hope that people are becomming sick enough of the corruption that they will demand transparency. For every Tobin or Delay or Cunningham that is caught, how many are there out there who have not only gotten away with it but who are still getting away with it? I shudder to think.

Who's in charge of prosecuting the phone-jamming?

The head US Attorney for the District of NH is Thomas P. Colantuono, appointed to his post by George W. Bush in 2001. *

In the 2004 Presidential campaign, Colantuono's wife made election-law news (Concord Monitor, October, 2004):

It's illegal for clergy to campaign for a candidate on church property, but that didn't stop a staffer for the Republican National Committee from soliciting help re-electing President Bush last week.
In an e-mail to "pastors, church leaders and ministries,"Pam Colantuono, wife of Tom Colantuono (a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney for New Hampshire), asked clergy for help getting a pro-Bush flier to parishioners. Colantuono was clear about how priests could do this without breaking the law.

snip


The RNC paid Pam Colantuono a $4,000 for "Political consulting" in 2004. She also addressed the NH Right to Life group on behalf of Bush-Cheney '04, but it's not clear whether or not she worked with RNC executive James Tobin, who was New England chairman of Bush-Cheney '04 during that time.
Anyway, if you have been wondering...

snip

why the US Attorney's Office has moved so slowly in its investigation of the 2002 phone-jamming scandal...
why the US Attorney never indicted or even revealed the name of phone-jammer James Tobin until NH Democrats forced the issue...
why the US Attorney has actively interfered with the civil suit filed by NH Democrats ...
why RNC defense attorney* * Robert Kelner seems to have an inside line on what the US Attorneys are doing...
...one possible explanation could be that the chief US Attorney in NH may have personal and/or political ties to many of the people his team is supposed to be investigating.

snip

* * One of the few individual donors to Tom Colantuono's unsuccessful bid for a seat in the US Congress was Ovide P Lamontagne, an attorney with Devine, Millimet, and Branch who is defending the NH Republican Party against the phone-jamming civil suit filed by the NH Democrats.

http://betsydevine.weblogger.com/2006/05/03#a2729

[MH1]

1. Interesting stuff...unravels the web a little more. (or illuminates it,

at least.)

And it looks like they'd better drag their feet on this one:

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/06/03/ale06035.html

March 23, 2006

Did White House Direct Phone Jamming Scheme?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

From the DNC

Washington, DC - A new report suggests that the national Republican establishment--including the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and even the Bush White House--may have had a role in the criminal Election Day phone jamming scheme that disenfranchised countless New Hampshire voters in 2002.

The Union Leader today reported that "court records show Ken Mehlman's office received more than 75 telephone calls from now-convicted phone-jam conspirator James Tobin from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of that year." At the time, Mehlman--the current RNC Chair--was White House political director. This raises the disturbing question of whether Tobin, who worked for the RNC and the NRSC at the time and has since been convicted on two criminal charges for his role in the scheme, discussed the plan with one of the President's most important political strategists.

And guess who the guy who supervised the phone jamming (Terry Nelson) is now working for?

Mr. Flip-Flop Dobson-a$$-kissing Slimeball, John McCain, himself.

McCain Strategist Terry Nelson Supervised James Tobin During NH Phone Jamming Scandal; Tobin Convicted of Federal Telephone Harassment Charges. Tobin worked for the RNC and the NRSC during 2002, and was supervised by RNC Political Director Terry Nelson. On Election Day, a telemarketer hired by the New Hampshire GOP jammed the telephones of five state Democratic and one firefighters union get-out-the-vote phone banks. James Tobin was found guilty in December of federal telephone harassment charges for his role in the scandal.

Nelson also is connected with DeLay:

McCain Strategist Terry Nelson Served As Middleman in DeLay TRMPAC Money Laundering Scheme, Named in Indictment and Had to Testify. Before the 2002 election, John Colyandro, the executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, sent a blank check to Jim Ellis. According to the indictment, Ellis, who ran DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, negotiated an exchange of corporate money for campaign donations with Terry Nelson, RNC Political Director. As a result, TRMPAC contributed $190,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee on September 20, 2002 - a contribution that included corporate money. Within two weeks, the RNSEC contributed the same amount back to seven Texas legislative candidates that were TRMPAC targets. Nelson testified to the grand jury investigating the DeLay scandal in March of 2004.

And then there's the Haley Barbour / NH phone-jamming connection:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12528891 /

Mississippi governor helped implicated firm

GOP Marketplace allegedly involved in political dirty tricks

The Associated Press

Updated: 7:48 a.m. ET April 28, 2006

WASHINGTON - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican Party chairman, arranged the startup financing for a GOP telemarketing company implicated in two criminal cases involving election dirty tricks.

Virginia corporation records show Barbour's investment company arranged a quarter-million dollar loan to GOP Marketplace in 2000 and also gave a promotional plug to the telemarketer several months later.

(snip)

Dirty tricks in NH, NJ

By 2002, according to federal court records, GOP Marketplace president Allen Raymond and the Alexandria, Va.-based company were carrying out political dirty tricks in New Hampshire and New Jersey.

Raymond, who once worked for Barbour at the Republican National Committee, is serving a three-month prison term after pleading guilty to arranging for hundreds of hang-up calls in New Hampshire in 2002. The calls jammed Democratic phone lines that were offering assistance in getting to polling stations in a close U.S. Senate race.

Their poisonous tentacles are numerous and deeply embedded.

[ProSense]

2. Add this!

It all adds up to the crime of the century!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[_dynamicdems]

5. It led up to the crime of the century. That was the 2004 election. n/t

[_dynamicdems]

4. Yes, I've been following this and have been disgusted how

high up this might possibly go or how little people like McCain care who they get in bed with.

The White House connection didn't surprise me and neither did the McCain connection. This is what these folks do. I was watching and waiting for more RW scandal over this, but it hurts to realize that the corruption is also embedded deep within my own state. And if this happened in NH, you can bet it happened tenfold in Ohio.

The article I linked to was posted by a NH resident who is apparently disgusted at the state level corruption in NH. This blew me out of the water. Like most people, I've been interested in hearing how high up this went, but it never occurred to me to look in the other direction. The local officials who allow this too go unchecked are a huge problem. To use a rather crude example: it's like pulling a tick off a dog. You need to get all the pieces of the "legs" or infection might set in.

This article hit me over the head with the implications and significance of corruption and partisanship at the local level. I've been looking at the big fish: DeLay, Cunningham, Rove and even the bigger fish in the WH Administration. It never occurred to me that the local corruption provides the roots and the sustenance for this kind of weed. And you always have to pull out the roots.

[MH1]

3. Did you see this - "Phone Jamming 101"

http://www.senatemajority.com/node/227

TONS of info on this page!

[_dynamicdems]

6. No, I hadn't see that. Good info there! An alternate title might be:

"Everything you ever wanted to know about phone jamming, but were afraid to ask."

This whole thing has bugged me for a long time because Jean Shaheen would have been such a good senator.

[ray of light]

7. we need to make sure all of this is in the research forum