Don't forget to vote on or before November 2!

Speaking out a year ago against the idea of holding civilian trials for terrorism suspects, Liz Cheney captured the paranoid arrogance of the past decade with stunning efficiency:
“This demonstrates conclusively that we are going back to a pre-9/11 mentality,” she said.

Oh the horror! Fair trials, rule of law, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, blah, blah, blah — remember what a nuisance our justice system used to be before Liz’s father and the rest of the neocon High Nooniacs made us safe by hustling us off to a police state and perpetual war?

I can’t help but think about the younger Cheney’s comment — and the fear it implies, not of terrorists but of liberals — in connection with the lawsuit that a recently freed Guantanamo detainee, Abdul Razak al Janko, has filed in U.S. Federal Court against Robert Gates, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and about a hundred other current and former military and government officials.

The New York Times reported on October 11 that one of America's leading bioweapons experts, William C. Patrick III, had died on October 1. The 10-day delay in the report of his death is in keeping with the secret nature of Patrick's life. The Times reported that Patrick "...made enough germs to kill everyone on Earth many times over."

The frightening and ghoulish nature of Patrick's work is fit for reflection this Halloween season. In 2001, the so-called "Amerithrax" attacks rocked the United States. Initially, an FBI agent in Columbus, Ohio told the Columbus Free Press that Patrick was being investigated as a possible suspect in the anthrax attacks which occurred through the U.S. mail system. In all, five people died and 17 others were infected.

Take it from David Axelrod. “Almost the entire Republican margin is based on the enthusiasm gap,” the president’s senior adviser said last week. “And if Democrats come out in the same turnout as Republicans, it’s going to be a much different election.”

But we don’t get to have a different election. After more than 20 months of White House insistence that the only useful role for progressive canaries is to keep singing the president’s tune, the electoral coal mine is filled with the political equivalent of carbon monoxide and methane.

Like canaries in mines -- providing early warnings -- an increasing number of progressives reacted to politically toxic gases. The base was crumbling.

But the purportedly savvy guys at the top of the administration publicly expressed scorn for that base. Instead of viewing its continual erosion as a harbinger of disaster for the midterm election, the dismissive responses included gratuitous verbal swipes from the White House. But public insults have been the least of the problem. The essence has been the policies of governance.

If you have a choice, vote the old fashioned way: At the polls, allowing plenty of time, and ready to assert your right to vote, by provisional ballot if necessary, if you are told your name is not on the list. Although it is "easy and fun", vote by mail is second only to Internet voting in the risk it presents to American democracy. To get a glimpse of just how slipshod our control system for vote-by-mail is, read the story of Jeffrey Dean and his prison companion, John Elder:

While in prison, embezzler Jeffrey Dean became friends with a narcotics trafficker named John Elder. While still in prison, on a work-release program, Jeffrey Dean was tasked with creating a computerized vote by mail program for King County, Washington. He began this assignment while working for his brother, Neil Dean, whose business had a contract with King County to provide temporary workers for its huge absentee voting operation. At the time, King County had about 1 million voters, 600,000 of whom voted by absentee.

Jeff and Neil Dean became involved in creating a vote-by-mail automation program to handle mail processing and signature comparison.