Investigative Journalist Greg Palast Reports on the Firing of New Mexico Attorney David Iglesias

[MadRat]

Karl Rove is not the "sharpest knife in the drawer" according to investigative reporter, Greg Palast. It turns out he likes to send emails to the wrong address, georgewbush.org, rather than the correct address of georgewbush.com. So basically Karl fed the opposition the very information he wanted to be secret when he circumvented government email servers by using the private party email servers to carry out his staff communications.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/14/1426254

I find it hard to believe that the claim about the ability to disqualify voters by mail. It would be nice to see this story substantiated. Is it true that a party can challenge the legitimacy of a voter by simply sending them certified mail? And to think members of the armed services, especially fingered by race since its a stereotype blacks vote democrat, would be singled out by this policy is disturbing. Were millions of voters really challenged during the last election?? I thought the Sailors and Overseas Act prevented such nonsense like this. If Karl Rove and Tim Griffin really perpetuated this idea of "caged lists", and abused their governmental positions in order to garner the information, then it seems only fair that a special prosecutor should investigate the allegations.

 

[dyn2nvu]

Nah man it wasn't Karl sending the emails, it was his assistant's assistant. :laugh:

 

[Lemon law]

As a basic liberal I am still somewhat troubled---its one thing to jump up and down saying I have these 500 e-mails that prove a conspiracy to obstruct Justice, its another thing to show the e-mails and make them public. Its the same trick a good ole Joe McCarthy used in the early 1950's to demonise a lot of dedicated people.

But the surface charge is very serious and to a certain extent the Justice Dept is now rigged and cannot be trusted. Its time to see if the charges will stand up to scrutiny or not. If so, lets get the show on the road and upgrade this from a mere conspiracy theory to criminal charges.

As a personal bias I would like to see Karl Rove&his many minions frog marched out of the white house and ultimately jailed. But I have little time to waste on charges that won't stick. And I suspect congress is playing their cards close to the vest. The entire Gonzales scandal shows that the GWB administration has been very sloppy about covering their tracks. And GWB's stubborn loyalty to Gonzales only serves to make various investigations reach critical mass sooner. Had GWB fired Alberto early on, not as many of his littler rats would have been forced out into the open. Now all eyes will be on Monica Goodling who is slated to testify May 23. But we may also see various parts of her immunity deal leaked earlier.

As for Rove, he will likely be a common theme in many other congressional investigations. We will ultimately see if Karl was way too smart or not. It took 18 months to get Nixon and I suspect expecting results in only four months will prove over optimistic.

In short my message is----lets get the rats ethically and legally without resorting to trail by rumor underhanded tricks. Some patience required.

 

[MadRat]

Do you think that these emails are what are propelling the whole anti-Gonzales affair?

 

[Lemon law]

If Madrat asks the question of me---Do you think that these emails are what are propelling the whole anti-Gonzales affair?

A good part of what is propelling the fire Alberto movement is e-mails but not THOSE missing emails. When congress asked the justice department for information regarding the US attorney firings many emails were turned over. What proved absolutely comical was that the emails turned over totally destroyed any version(s) that the justice department offered to explain why the attorneys were fired. Explanations that the previous Rubber stamp republican congress would have accepted at face value and not have questioned. And as a point of law, its a criminal act according to the Presidential records act to destroy any emails. And we also now know that an illegal back door to the RNC existed to try to get around that law.

But if you are talking about THOSE 500 emails that Palast claims to have---thats quite another stinking kettle of fish and is only tangentially related to the Gonzales scandal. How much those alleged Palast emails influenced the investigators of the Gonzales scandal is something you, I, and the public may never know. But if the THOSE OTHER EMAILS can be proved, we are talking two or more COMPLETE SERIOUS FELONIES that may or may not involve Gonzales or anyone directly working in the Justice Department.

The point is thats its congresses and the judicial branch's job to make sure that the executive branch is kept honest---and for that matter its the job of the other two branches to keep the Legislative branch honest---such are the checks and balances our founding fathers set up. And the press has a roving commission to keep all three branches honest. Just a little fishing around has found more and more. And has also shown that GWB&co. is incompetent at covering their own tracks. I am guessing that there will be quite a large number of scandals that will surface with many of them clearly criminal---and they may or may not tie in GWB himself. I could be wrong---time will tell.---but one thing for sure---if ye does not seek---ye will not find.----But lots of seeking will become the norm. I just want to make sure that what is found is not swiftboat crapola that unfairly besmerches.---conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen---a charge that will stand up in a court of law is the genuine article.

And in terms of seeking and finding---when you roll over that rock to see whats under it---you never know what all is under the rock. But when you receive that hot tip from the press, its can be a clue on what rock to look under and also a clue to what types of worms live under the rock. And the congress has subpoena powers and the press does not.

 

[Thump553]

That certified mail deal is used over and over again-by the party trying to hold down voter turnout, which is almost always the GOP. As alluded above, it can backfire if they succeed in excluding servicemen serving overseas.

These days we have provisional ballots, which is a halfway step of addressing this alleged "anti-fraud" abuse of the electoral system.

 

[Craig234]

Palast has an outstanding track record of investigative journalism, but like another of the nation's top investigate journalists, Seymour Hersh, he can - and does - 'hype' the info, which can affect at least his perceived credibility.

I remember watching him after the 2000 election going everywhere with a laptop and holding it up, McCarthy-style, and saying that on it was the list of tens of thousands of voters disenfranchised; now, it's the 500 e-mails.

I don't think he's making things up, but he does 'stretch' the info IMO.

For example, he laid out the statistics in the 2000 election in Florida how the most white districts had the lowest vote error rate - like 1% typically - and the most black had the most votes disqualified - more like 10%. Smoking gun, huh? And he put the blame on Bush/Harris.

But closer examination found something not in his book - that there was a near-perfect correlation between precincts which used machines that let the voters correct errors, with low error rates, and districts whic used central counting that simply threw out error ballots, with the high rates of votes thrown out. So, was the conspiracy to give blacks the central, high rate thrown out machines?

No - the central counting is a lot cheaper, and the people who chose which machines to use were the local officials - democrats for the black districts. So the real story was simply that the poor districts had used less expensive machines at great cost to the nation.

I asked Palast, what was the big crime of Bush and Harris in all that? He said that they had had the machines demonstrated to them, and were aware of the difference, and did not warn the democratic districts. Well, OK, not nice, but not the scandal his book had implied, either.

His reporting is essential for uncovering a lot of crucial info, he's just outstanding for finding scandal info, but there's a grain of salt needed on his reporting too, IMO, for 'hype'.