Ohio is reeling with a mixture of outrage and hilarity as Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has revealed that he has owned stock in the Diebold voting machine company, to which Blackwell tried to award unbid contracts worth millions while allowing its operators to steal Ohio elections. A top Republican election official also says a Diebold operative told him he made a $50,000 donation to Blackwell's "political interests."

A veritable army of attorneys on all sides of Ohio's political spectrum will soon report whether Blackwell has violated the law. But in any event, the revelations could have a huge impact on the state whose dubiously counted electoral votes gave George W. Bush a second term. Diebold was the vendor in three Ohio counties in 2004. Because of Blackwell's effort, 41 counties used Diebold machines in Ohio's highly dubious 2005 election, and now 47 counties will use Diebold touchscreen voting machines in the May 2006 primary, and in the fall election that will decide who will be the state's new governor.

AUSTIN, Texas -- In general, I'm against kicking 'em when they're down ... unless really awful people are involved. I figured Tom DeLay is so awful, plenty of people would gang up on him and I could pass.

Imagine my surprise when the toughest question one famous TV tough guy could come up with was, "Do you think you invested too much in the Republican Party?" Another inquired whether DeLay could think of any mistakes he'd made. I waited with bated breath for the immortal, "I wish I could learn not to work so hard," but no, he couldn't think of a single one.

Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay first came to power promising to restore democracy to the House of Representatives, supposedly suffering from then-Speaker Jim Wright's tyrannical regime. Even after the Rs drove Wright from office, however, bipartisanship was out of the question for DeLay. In the budget fight and government shutdown of 1995, for instance, DeLay rejected compromise and famously said, "It's time for all-out war."

Can't you get an extremely large group of Ohio voters,especially Blacks, who were disenfranchised to come together to sue Kenneth Blackwell for preventing them from voting which is a part of the American Constitution. He committed a federal offense by interfering with their right to vote. He should be in prison along with Katherine Harris of Florida but nobody has the balls to pull them both into court. I would if I had a valid reason but neither one did anything to me personally except to help get George W Bush in office.

Now that 9/11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui has been cleared for the death penalty, the din will rise for his immediate execution.

But if he really is guilty, and is now seeking martyrdom, the death penalty goes too easy on him. We should sit him in front of a "Scream Screen" instead.

The last mass murderer to face the death penalty in this country hastily embraced it. When faced with a choice between life in prison or death, Timothy McVeigh chose death. Perhaps many of the families of the 180 people he slaughtered at the federal building in Oklahoma City found closure in that.

But so did McVeigh. In existential terms, he got off easy. He may be roasting in Hell right now, but we can't know that. And if he is, he would have gone anyway, without taxpayers footing the bill for his assisted suicide.

AUSTIN, Texas -- On the premise that spring is too beautiful for a depressing topic like Iraq, I thought I'd take up a fun subject -- global warming.

Time magazine warns us to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried." On the other hand, my sister is on the Global Warming Committee of the Unitarian Church in Albuquerque, N.M. They go around replacing old light bulbs with more energy-efficient models. My money's on my sis.

It's a good thing the phrase "the tipping point" became a cliche just in time to help us describe global warming. Just a few years ago, we were more or less cruising along on global warming, with maybe 50 years or so to Do Something about it. Suddenly, the only question is how soon to push the panic button, and 10 minutes ago appears to be the right answer.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Despite an opposition boycott of Sunday's (April 2) nationwide poll, Thailand's billionaire prime minister expects to be re-elected but then suffer insults, allegations and condemnation by thousands of protesters determined to cripple his government and snarl Bangkok's streets.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra hoped this Southeast Asian nation's rural and urban poor would help re-elect his welfare-friendly Thai Rak Thai ("Thais Love Thais") party, which thrust him to power in 2001 and endorsed him in February 2005 with 19 million votes.

Clean-shaven Thaksin has been portrayed as Adolf Hitler by his enemies in speeches, published commentary, and huge posters caricaturing him with a swastika on his forehead and a black moustache -- prompting a public complaint by Israel's embassy.

After the election, Thaksin may unleash lawsuits against his critics, whose speeches mixed legitimate issues with rants and unproven allegations.

I liked the Hackwell article. He also has played a role in what was done to destroy us. He knew about it. We spoke to his office on more then a few occasions. He helped the snakes cover this hole thing up!

I wish the whole truth for once could be told. One day all these evil people will be brought to the light of justice, I am certain of this. It's just that in my life I have never seen justice work, ever. The truth is always hidden and twisted. Oh well, maybe one day.

Bob, when the truth is this obvious and people refuse to listen and or act on it, I always long to check their pockets for a receipt. They are usually involved or covering for somebody!
When President Bush said that the new democracy he's creating in Iraq may not resemble the one we have here in the United States, he wasn't kidding. In fact, in Bush's convoluted world of political delusion, he serves not only as the high exalted King of America, but the supreme mullah of Iraq as well. How else do you explain his brazen demand of the Shiite leadership that they remove their interim Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jafaari, because he "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" the recently nominated candidate. The story was reported Wednesday in the NY Times.

The "personal message from President Bush" was delivered to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Shiite political bloc, by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. The Shiite bloc had won a plurality in Iraq's parliamentary election last December. It nominated Mr. Jafaari in February to remain prime minister for four more years.

A serious question has been raised as to how C. Ellen Connally, a little-known, underfunded, African-American municipal judge from Cleveland, running for Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court against a well-financed incumbent, could have received more votes than John Kerry in 12 counties in Ohio. Not just a larger percentage of the vote. She drew more votes than John Kerry in these counties, in a race for Chief Justice that drew 1,195,882 fewer votes, statewide, than did the presidential race. The matter will be forever known, in the words of Reverend Jesse Jackson, as “The Connally Anomaly.”

The 12 counties are: Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert, and Warren.

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