Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid
Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 7:12 am
JOHN G. ROBERTS & THE FLORIDA REPUBLICAN BUCKET BRIGADE, by Charles Carreon
2:50 am, July 29, 2005
Y'all remember Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State that stopped the hand recounts in Palm Beach and other contested precincts that had been undertaken in order to count a host of Democratic votes that had turned up missing, uncounted, and miscounted. The same Katherine Harris who had removed 57,700 names from Florida's voter rolls on the grounds they were felons, even though many of the people deprived of the right to vote hadn't committed any crime at all. The same Katherine Harris who paid Choicepoint subsidiary DBT $2.3 million to “scrub” the voter database after firing the company that was doing the job the year before for a mere $5,700. Uh, yes, the same Choicepoint that lost the 4,000,000 names and related personal information earlier this year.
Greg Palast wrote about Harris' blatantly unfair voter de-registration policies, that affected not only the presidential vote, but also Jeb Bush's re-election race against Democratic challenger Bill McBride.
Harris sure knows how to pick her Elections Division Chief, and while Clayton Roberts may be no blood relation of John G. Roberts, I am sure they are well-acquainted based on Judge Roberts' intense labor revising briefs for the Bush campaign during the legal battles that were necessary to allow Ms. Harris' to keep her heavy hand on the throats of thousands of Florida voters, invalidating their votes for the presidential election. Jeb Bush's office tried to downplay Judge Roberts' unstinting labors to further the Bush dynastic impetus during the heady days of legal jousting that saw David Boies first win with the Florida Supreme Court to keep the recount going, and then lose before a Supreme Court opinion that has been widely denounced. As relayed by the AP, Jeb Bush's office threw cold water on the story:
Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre
But a Miami Herald interview with Ted Cruz, currently Texas Solicitor General, reveals the nominee had a lead role, along with other former clerks of Justice William Rehnquist, in revising the crucial briefs and preparing George W. Bush's lawyer Ted Olson for his oral argument in front of Rehnquist. Getting Roberts on the job, according to Cruz, was a no-brainer.
Remembering those heady, sleep-deprived days, when four-hundred Florida Republican lawyers, led by teams of ”litigation lions“ and ”800 pound gorillas,“ threw themselves at the task of frustrating the Democrats' efforts to ”in effect, steal the elections,“ Cruz almost choked up with admiration for Roberts. From Cruz's viewpoint, Roberts was a hero, a selfless lawyer who ”already had a name [and] didn't need the recognition,“ but along with everyone else, he just ”grabbed a bucket" to put out the fire.
Yeah, and a hell of a dangerous fire that was — all those people counting ballots that had been carefully hidden, miscounted, misplaced. Flames were busting out all over. A conflagration of fair voting was about to engulf the process. Good thing they put that out. And everybody loves a fireman.
The Miami Herald article is at this link: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news
/12230971.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
The image below is from the movie version of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. See more screen caps of great films at http://www.american-buddha.com/site.map.htm
2:50 am, July 29, 2005
Y'all remember Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State that stopped the hand recounts in Palm Beach and other contested precincts that had been undertaken in order to count a host of Democratic votes that had turned up missing, uncounted, and miscounted. The same Katherine Harris who had removed 57,700 names from Florida's voter rolls on the grounds they were felons, even though many of the people deprived of the right to vote hadn't committed any crime at all. The same Katherine Harris who paid Choicepoint subsidiary DBT $2.3 million to “scrub” the voter database after firing the company that was doing the job the year before for a mere $5,700. Uh, yes, the same Choicepoint that lost the 4,000,000 names and related personal information earlier this year.
Greg Palast wrote about Harris' blatantly unfair voter de-registration policies, that affected not only the presidential vote, but also Jeb Bush's re-election race against Democratic challenger Bill McBride.
Greg Palast writing for Slate.com
Florida is the only state paying a private company that promises to ”cleanse" voter rolls. The state signed a $4 million contract with DBT in 1998 (since 1999 a division of ChoicePoint of Atlanta) to create the scrub list, called the central voter file, which was mandated by a 1998 state voter-fraud law. *** Florida paid DBT $4.3 million over three years to help identify felons illegally registered to vote, replacing a company that had charged the state only $5,700 per year for this work ... because the giant database operator, which aids the FBI on manhunts, offered to verify the accuracy of the list using several of its 1,200 databases [and] by telephone calls . . . . But, with the state's permission, DBT skipped those costly cross-checks. Last February, when asked to explain why DBT was paid for verification work not done, Florida Elections Division chief Clayton Roberts ended an agreed-upon interview with this reporter, locked himself in his office, and called in state troopers to remove this reporter from the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee.
Harris sure knows how to pick her Elections Division Chief, and while Clayton Roberts may be no blood relation of John G. Roberts, I am sure they are well-acquainted based on Judge Roberts' intense labor revising briefs for the Bush campaign during the legal battles that were necessary to allow Ms. Harris' to keep her heavy hand on the throats of thousands of Florida voters, invalidating their votes for the presidential election. Jeb Bush's office tried to downplay Judge Roberts' unstinting labors to further the Bush dynastic impetus during the heady days of legal jousting that saw David Boies first win with the Florida Supreme Court to keep the recount going, and then lose before a Supreme Court opinion that has been widely denounced. As relayed by the AP, Jeb Bush's office threw cold water on the story:
Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre
”He came down and met with the governor briefly and shared with him some of his thoughts on what he believed the governor's responsibilities were after a presidential election, a presidential election in dispute. There were several experts, including professors, scholars, constitutional experts who came down to Florida at that time and Judge Roberts was one of them.“
But a Miami Herald interview with Ted Cruz, currently Texas Solicitor General, reveals the nominee had a lead role, along with other former clerks of Justice William Rehnquist, in revising the crucial briefs and preparing George W. Bush's lawyer Ted Olson for his oral argument in front of Rehnquist. Getting Roberts on the job, according to Cruz, was a no-brainer.
Remembering those heady, sleep-deprived days, when four-hundred Florida Republican lawyers, led by teams of ”litigation lions“ and ”800 pound gorillas,“ threw themselves at the task of frustrating the Democrats' efforts to ”in effect, steal the elections,“ Cruz almost choked up with admiration for Roberts. From Cruz's viewpoint, Roberts was a hero, a selfless lawyer who ”already had a name [and] didn't need the recognition,“ but along with everyone else, he just ”grabbed a bucket" to put out the fire.
Yeah, and a hell of a dangerous fire that was — all those people counting ballots that had been carefully hidden, miscounted, misplaced. Flames were busting out all over. A conflagration of fair voting was about to engulf the process. Good thing they put that out. And everybody loves a fireman.
The Miami Herald article is at this link: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news
/12230971.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
The image below is from the movie version of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. See more screen caps of great films at http://www.american-buddha.com/site.map.htm