Tallahassee, FL: "Are we having fun yet?"

This is the message that appeared in the window of a county optical scan machine, startling Leon County Information Systems Officer Thomas James. Visibly shaken, he immediately turned the machine off.

Diebold's opti-scan (paper ballot) voting system uses a curious memory card design, offering penetration by a lone programmer such that standard canvassing procedures cannot detect election manipulation.

The Diebold optical scan system was used in about 800 jurisdictions in 2004. Among them were several hotbeds of controversy: Volusia County (FL); King County (WA); and the New Hampshire primary election, where machine results differed markedly from hand-counted localities.

New regs: Counting paper ballots forbidden

AUSTIN, Texas -- So, the Texas Legislature decided it's OK for gay couples to be foster parents, but only if they're not married. I would explain what message that sends, if only I understood it.

Look at it this way: At least we can hunt inside city limits now. My personal fave was the day they voted themselves a huge retirement pension and the next day cut retirement benefits for the teachers. Classy move, boys. Retiring solons will now get $36,000 a year after 12 years in the Lege. The job pays $7,200 a year and requires 140 days of work once every other year. Welcome to a Republican-dominated state.

As all hands know by now, the Lege got nowhere on the Big One -- the interrelated issues of property tax relief and school financing. The whole state is screaming for property tax relief because of the rise in real estate values.

In order to lower property taxes, you have to raise them on something else. So of course the House decided to tax ordinary people, instead of taxing big corporations. Not for nothing is the House gallery, where the business lobbyists sit, known as "the Owner's Box."

Itinerant pundits touching down briefly in Paris lost no time in stigmatizing the French for their resounding Non! in Sunday's referendum on the proposed Constitution for Europe. The French were charged with selfishness, self-absorption, nostalgia for a lost empire, unwholesome obsession with Descartes and Jacobinism, plus other crimes too frightful for individual citation.

Actually, the French did something both logical and heroic. The logic, supposedly a French trait, is simple enough: European Union has always been sold as integration in which living standards would be leveled up, not down; in which Europe would act as counterweight to America.

But since the European Union (EU) has produced a leveling down, particularly since the recruitment to the EU of poorer nations (and lower wages) in Eastern Europe, and since the new constitution seemed to ratify closer alliance with the world's No. 1 imperial power, logic dictated a Non, and 55 percent of French voters, in a 70 percent turnout, accepted the dictate.

AUSTIN, Texas -- As a longtime fan of both George Bushes' eccentric grasp of English, I naturally enjoyed this gem from W.: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." (Bush in Greece, N.Y., May 24, once more explaining his Social Security plan to a town hall meeting of perfectly average citizens, except they had all been pre-screened to allow only those who agree with him into the hall.)

"Catapulting the propaganda" would explain his performance at the press opportunity that same day at which he appeared surrounded by babies born from frozen embryos. He used the phrase "culture of life" at least 27 dozen times (I think I exaggerate, but maybe not). "The use of federal dollars to destroy life is something I simply do not support," he said to the press the following day.

Meanwhile, back in Baghdad, federal dollars are being used to destroy life at pretty good clip because Bush decided to wage an entirely elective war against a country that presented little or no threat to us. And according to the Downing Street memo, he damn well knew it, too.

In Guatemala sexual harassment is not illegal. In El Salvador and Honduras hundreds of thousands of children work illegally. The minimum wage for a Nicaraguan manufacturer worker is $55.74 a month, less than what a U.S. union worker with a similar job will make in a day.

There are also reports in Central America of worker blacklists, physical abuse by employers, and foreign companies closing operations after being informed workers want to form a union. None of these countries are in compliance with international labor standards. I could go on for pages. And actually I have, by reading the U.S. State Department’s annual Human Rights report.

“The enforcement of labor laws in the region needs more attention and resources,” said assistant U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeir in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee last month.