AUSTIN, Texas -- I often complain about the excess of irony in our national life, but this week, if you're not begoshed by the irony surplus, you haven't been paying attention. If we could just figure out a way to get energy out of the stuff, we'd be set for life.

Liberals for the filibuster; conservatives against it -- hilarious. Pentagon loses track of more than $1 trillion, and the Army can't find 56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. Not to mention Osama bin Ladin. And more:

-- Right-wing Republicans fight to make the world safe from "judicial activists" by appointing Priscilla Owen -- the biggest, baddest, worstest judicial activist Texas ever produced -- to the federal bench.

Owen is so notorious for reading her own opinions into the law, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then her colleague on the Texas Supreme Court, described her opinion in a parental consent case as "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." (For further irony, see Gonzales' subsequent attempts to deny that he was describing Owen.)

The battle between Deputy Director Sherole Eaton, a recently fired federal whistleblower, and the Hocking County Board of Elections (BOE) she worked for, is becoming a bare-knuckled political brawl.

The Free Press has learned that Eaton supporters will protest at the Hocking County BOE Thursday, May 26 and plan to allege that Susan Hughes, a Democrat who seconded the motion to fire Eaton, is illegally on the BOE.

During last December’s presidential election recount, Eaton signed a sworn affidavit that a Triad, Inc. voting machine technician came into the BOE without being scheduled and changed out the county’s vote-tabulation computer hard drive. Eaton also claimed that he offered a “cheat sheet” to make sure the recount tally matched the original election results.

The Logan Daily News reported that BOE members privately complained “that Eaton was a disruptive influence in the office.” But, all BOE members “refused to be quoted on the record.”

Sherole Eaton is as defiant as ever and determined to stand up for democracy. Despite recovering from recent carotic artery surgery and scheduled for brain surgery on June 6 for a brain aneurysm, Eaton, perhaps Ohio’s most well-known whistleblower, refuses to resign as Deputy Director of the Hocking County Board of Elections.

Eaton made national news last December during Ohio’s election recount when she swore in an affidavit that a Triad voting machine technician replaced the hard drive on Hocking County’s central “computer and tabulation machine.”

“I still can’t understand what he was doing there on his own time replacing the hard drive on our computer, our brain, where all the county’s voting information was, in the middle of a recount,” Eaton offered.

Lisa Schwartze, Director of the Hocking County Board of Elections, told the Free Press that Eaton has until June 30 to resign. Initially she told the paper that Eaton was “on vacation” but, the Logan Daily News reported that Eaton was fired on Thursday, May 19 after a five hour meeting.

My name is Bruce Tetley. I am a nobody, a middle aged musician who has never cleared more than $10,000 a year in this life. Born and raised in Syracuse, N.Y., I moved to Florida in 1996, then I moved to Maui in November of 2004. I have good reason to believe my life is in danger.

In the past week my bank accounts have been emptied electronically and my credit cards maxed out. As far as the banks are concerned, all transactions were legally done and I have no recourse. In the past year I've had two very omi- nous, threatening phone calls and two symbolic but no less threatening "messages". One was a dead rat at the foot of my bed back in Florida, and the other was a penny, painted red, at the foot of my bed yesterday. (Not worth a red cent) Let me begin to explain with some history.

I have not trusted the government of this nation for as long as I can remember. Actually, it started in 1960 during the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Even as a 10 year old, I didn't trust "tricky Dick". When Kennedy was murdered in '63, I knew something was terribly wrong and wasn't shy about say- ing so. I read the Warren Report from cover to cover. (It

Media activism has achieved a lot. But I don’t believe there’s anything to be satisfied with -- considering the present-day realities of corporate media and the warfare state.

War has become a constant of U.S. foreign policy, and media flackery for the war-makers in Washington is routine -- boosting militarism that tilts the country in more authoritarian directions. The dominant news outlets provide an ongoing debate over how to fine-tune the machinery of war. What we need is a debate over how to dismantle the war machine.

When there are appreciable splits within or between the two major political parties, the mainstream news coverage is apt to include some divergent outlooks. But when elites in Washington close ranks for war, the major media are more inclined to shut down real discourse.

Here’s an example: In late February 2003, three weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq began, management at MSNBC cancelled the nightly “Donahue” program. A leaked in-house report said Phil Donahue’s show would present a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” The problem: “He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war,