May 26, 2007 02:55 PM UTC

Keys to the Kingdom -- and 2008

• 0 Comments
• by: riogrande

Here’s something that will get you a collective yawn out there in the hinterlands, but which the wonks and wonkettes who haunt this site should be able to figure out without slides.  From GregPalast.com:

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”???

That’s right.  United States Attorney Tim Griffin. The guy charged with enforcing the laws of these United States … and the guy we gave so-called “prosecutorial discretion” not to prosecute crimes committed on his watch.

Full story: http://www.gregpalas…

As Palast explains [see the article if you need to get up to speed], “caging” is a felony.  But if you own your very own local United States Attorney, it is a felony that will never be prosecuted.  And if you also ‘own’ the media, it is a felony that will never be reported.  Palast continues:

Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet – except the USA – only because America’s news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d’etat that chose our President in 2004.

[I literally can’t draw enough attention to this one.  Information is the lifeblood of a democracy, and our fascist elites have applied a tourniquet.  Whether it is the Denver comPost or FAUX News, we don’t get what we need to know to participate effectively in our democracy.  We don’t know about our country what our friends in New Zealand do.  Dos vidanye, Comrade!]

Here’s how caging worked, and along with Griffin’s thoughtful emails themselves you’ll understand it all in no time.

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked “Do not forward” to voters’ homes. Letters returned (“caged”) were used as evidence to block these voters’ right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and – you got to love this – American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren’t these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation – and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

How do I know? I have the caging lists…

As you may recall, I brought a local scandal involving Mitch Morrissey to your attention.  Essentially, the same facts.  A crime had been committed, and the requisite facts were proven beyond cavil (http://home.earthlin…). But if you own the prosecutor, “the law” is not even a minor inconvenience.