Who lied & who didn't? A Bradley Schlozman, U.S. attorney scandal roundup

[Updated 2:31 p.m.]

Talking Points Memo now has its video montage of Bradley Schlozman's testimony up. Josh Marshall calls Schlozman's performance "one of the most acrimonious, combustible and frankly mutually-contemptuous testimony I've ever seen."

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[The original post is below.]

Josh Marshall speculates that Bradley Schlozman lied in his testimony before Congress yesterday and promises to post a video compilation of Schlozman's testimony later this morning.

TPMmuckraker mulls conflicting accounts on why people working for a liberal group were indicted for voter fraud just before the November election.

Fine coverage, context and analysis at Watching Those We Chose (where I also blog) of Schlozman's testimony and the media response to it. Thanks corpus juris.

I am sick of anonymous sources.

"I can't recall." Bradley Schlozman edition.

Schlozman and Graves, Compare and Contrast

The bottom line? It looks more and more like the GOP was attempting the throw the Missouri Senate election to their candidate.

In This Moment's earlier take on the situation.

Tuesday Reads: George Bush, Al Gore, impeachment & voter fraud

By Diane Silver

So much to read, so little time.

Salon.com tells us why our not-so-beloved President George W. Bush hasn't been impeached yet. The problem, says writer Gary Kamiya is that we're his co-conspirators.

Bush's warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America's support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It's a national myth. It's John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness -- come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we're not ready to do that.

Al Gore writes in his new book, The Assault on Reason, about how the Bushies have helped steer American culture into a dark place. We now live in a country, Gore says, where “reason, logic and truth" play a "sharply diminished role" in how we make decisions.

Slate takes a look at the lies about voting fraud and the death of the American Center for Voting Rights. (OK, that's not a Tuesday article, but it's still well worth a read.)

More on the US attorney scandal, Missouri & questions about Kansas

By Diane Silver

Corpus Juris over at Watching Those We Chose has a good overview today on what is looking more and more like a Republican attempt to undermine the November election in Missouri.

What happened? Think: Voting fraud hysteria that turned out to be a fraud itself and the U.S. attorney scandal.

Missouri may well have been targeted because of the importance of the Senate race in that half red, half blue state.

Attempts to drum up fear over voting fraud has already showed up in the Kansas Legislature. (scroll down. Also see here.) With the fortunes of Kansas Democrats on the rise these days, can the Sunflower State expect to see increasing efforts to muck with our elections?

Stay tuned...
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In the interest of transparency, I also blog periodically at Watching Those We Chose.

More on how the Bushies may be meddling in Kansas elections

By Diane Silver

When the Kansas Legislature goes back into session Wednesday, we may well see how the long arm of the Bush Administration reaches out from Washington, D.C., to meddle in voting in Kansas.

At issue is a proposed Kansas law requiring voters to bring identification to polling places. Such a bill looks sensible at first blush. Unfortunately, the measure is (1) aimed at a problem that doesn't exist in Kansas, and even the bill's supporters admit that, and (2) could potentially limit voting by the poor who don't have easy access to drivers licenses or other IDs.

Muckraker.com does a good job today of showing how the firings of US Attorneys and a long-time Bush Administration attempt to purge voting rolls all fit together.

Has Kansas gotten tangled up in a long-armed attempt to undermine elections by limiting turnout among Democratic constituencies? In October, I wrote about some disturbing voter registration and polling problems in this state. Were these more than just simple goofs?

Bush & Alberto Gonzales: Undermining elections & the Kansas connection

By Diane Silver

Like the Energizer Bunny, the U.S. Attorney scandal keeps going and going. Whether you're a conservative or a liberal, I suspect, it also keeps getting more and more horrifying.

If you're a Bushie, the sight of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in front of Congress probably didn't brighten your day, no matter what the White House claims. The New York Times editorializes this morning:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

Meanwhile, McClatchy Newspapers has uncovered a Bushie campaign to limit voter turnout in what appears to be a bold attempt to undermine elections in favor of the GOP.

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

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Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians.

The push for Voter ID laws, like the one in Kansas, is also part of this.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

The Kansas Connection

The Kansas bill, which would require voters to bring identification to polling places, was narrowly defeated in the House during the regular session. However, it could come up again for a vote in the wrap-up session, which starts on Wednesday.

This bill is up for consideration despite the fact that, as the Lawrence Journal-World reports:

Supporters conceded they had no evidence of illegal immigrants trying to vote in Kansas, or other forms of voter fraud.

Scroll down to find the Voter ID section in this Journal-World capitol briefing.

So here we sit, far from Washington, and it seems clear: Kansas is caught in a nationwide GOP effort to repress voting by minorities and the poor.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration claims to be exporting democracy to the rest of the world. How can they possibly do that when they don't seem to believe in democracy at home?