Mike Connell, Republican IT Go-To Guy, dies in plane crash

Blogged by Brad Friedman on 7/24/2008 3:59PM

Rove Threatened GOP IT Guru If He Does Not 'Take the Fall' for Election Fraud in Ohio, Says Attorney

Letter Sent to Attorney General Mukasey Requesting 'Protection for Mr. Connell and His Family From This Reported Attempt to Intimidate a Witness' After Tip from 'Credible Source'

UPDATE: OH AG Reportedly Asked to Provide Immunity Protection...

Karl Rove has threatened a GOP high-tech guru and his wife, if he does not "'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio," according to a letter sent this morning to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, by Ohio election attorney Cliff Arnebeck.

The email, posted in full below, details threats against Mike Connell of the Republican firm New Media Communications, which describes itself on its website as "a powerhouse in the field of Republican website development and Internet services" and having "played a strategic role in helping the GOP expand its technological supremacy."

[. . .]

Amazing how unlucky people get just before they're supposed to testify.

December 19th, 2008

MIKE CONNELL, GOP 'IT GURU', DIES IN SOLO PLANE CRASH

Key Witness in OH '04 Election Fraud Case, Built WH Email System, More, Said Threatened by Rove

Described as a "high IQ Forrest Gump" for his consistent proximity to Republican "crime scenes" Connell was killed in a solo plane crash in Ohio on Friday night. Connell had built the Ohio '04 election night reporting website, and sites for Bush, McCain and the Swiftboaters. He also created network firewalls for key Congressional committees and developed the email system which "lost" thousands of White House emails. He had reportedly been threatened by Karl Rove over the summer, just prior to being forced to testify by a federal judge in Ohio in a 2004 election fraud lawsuit..

Financial Elite Terrorism—Bushco at work

This is mind boggling in it's implications. Let's dissect this a bit...

White House Dispatches Team to Push Economic Bill

September 23, 2008, 10:42 a.m.
By Keith Koffler
Roll Call Staff

---

The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on Congress to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout fund, suggesting the markets cannot wait much longer and dispatching Vice President Cheney and other top officials up Pennsylvania Avenue to jawbone lawmakers.

Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and presidential adviser Ed Gillespie are meeting this morning with House Republican conservatives, where a rebellion is brewing against the size and questionable free market credentials of the administration proposal.

Yes, that's right— the opposition is coming from House Republican Conservatives. For a quick education, look up Ed Gillespie in Wikipedia: "When Karl Rove also departed in August, the Washington Post described Gillespie as stepping up to do part of Karl Rove's job in the White House" "He also played an aggressive role as spokesman for the Bush campaign during the vote recount in Florida."

Cheney will later gather with GOP Senators at the regular Tuesday lunch. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who collaborated in drawing up the proposal, are testifying this morning on Capitol Hill in an effort to defend their handiwork.

But Bush himself continues to do little to explain his plan, and he has refused to be questioned about it.

How much you want to bet he doesn't have a clue what they're doing.

Asked during a telephone briefing for reporters today whether Bush was speaking with lawmakers, White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said the president is aware of their concerns but that Paulson is the salesman.

At least, that's what they told Bush.

Paulson said Congress and the administration must move rapidly.

Before anyone actually has a chance to read the thing. Hey, it worked with the Patriot Act...

“We must do so in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten American families' financial well-being, the viability of businesses both small and large, and the very health of our economy,” Paulson said in remarks as prepared for delivery. “The market turmoil we are experiencing today poses great risk to U.S. taxpayers.”

Fratto said it would be “unthinkable” for Congress not to pass legislation this week, asserting the result would be a “very, very serious situation” for the U.S. economy.

“It shouldn’t take much analysis to remember what happened last week, which was a very serious freeze-up in our credit markets,” Fratto said. “Our financial markets right now do not need uncertainty, they need increased certainty as to how this rescue plan is going to go forward — and that they can be sure that there is a plan to go forward — and that will begin the correction in our financial markets.”

Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

And here's the clue. They've been working this thing up for months, waiting for things to get so desparate, so critical, that they could spring it on Congress and then force it through before anyone could take a breath.

If it was so serious, why didn't they discuss it with, oh, maybe the Congressional Republican Leaders? I know, it would be asking too much to expect them to discuss it with the folks who supposedly actually run Congress, the Democrats...

This time they're even trying to scam their own Republicans.

Amid growing criticism of the initiative from multiple quarters, Fratto sought to defend its key principles and argue against changes.

He argued that the proposal is being unfairly characterized as a boon to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, since credit market difficulties also squeeze average consumers. He minimized the need to help homeowners as part of the package — a key demand of Democrats — saying aiding the credit markets will help on its own and noting that Congress just approved a housing bill that includes assistance.

And Fratto sought to beat back efforts to limit the pay of CEOs whose companies would draw assistance under the legislation, saying it would make it difficult for the plan to work “If you provide disincentives for companies and firms out there that are holding mortgage-backed securities and other securities from participating in the program.”

What part of "rule of law" do they not understand? Apparently, any of it. "Making stupid, economy-threatening scams illegal might make crooks oppose it." Do tell.

Fratto noted that some firms holding troubled securities are otherwise successful. “They were not necessarily irresponsible players, and so you have to be careful how you deal with them,” he said.

Yes, and the Mafia built schools and orphanages...Hitler was kind to children... it is a complex world.

Some protesters and newsreporters exercise their constitutional rights and are beaten and jailed without mercy. No one is too concerned about being careful how they're dealt with...

the Bogus Voter Fraud Problem

Space Invaders: Five Million Aliens for Hillary

Will José Crow Voter ID Laws Pick Our President?

by Greg Palast
Thursday, January 10, 2008

State Representative Russell Pearce of Mesa Arizona has warned us:

"There is a massive effort under way to register illegal aliens in this country."

How many? According to the Congressman's office, there are five million: Democrats, he says, who are not good Americans - they're Mexicans!

Really?! Holy Cow! The Senator has uncovered a conspiracy to flood the voter rolls with Brown Hordes who've swum the Rio Grande just for a chance to vote for Hillary Clinton?!

Thank the Lord for vigilant citizens like Senator Pearce. His efforts, along with the work of other patriotic (Republican) politicians, successfully stopped 300,000 voters from obtaining ballots in 2004 - because these voters had brought the wrong ID to the polls. New ID laws in Arizona and half a dozen states blocked these voters at the polling-house door. Others with "wrong" ID's were handed what are called 'provisional' ballots - which were then not counted.

On Wednesday, the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court indicated it would vote to uphold these new voter ID requirements.

And just in time. If not for these new ID laws, warns Senator Pearce and other Republicans across the nation, a dark wave of illegal aliens would vote again in our upcoming Presidential election.

Or maybe not. Maybe there aren't five million illegal voters for Hillary or Obama or Edwards. Maybe there are just five hundred. Maybe there are none.

I called Senator Pearce's office to get a couple of the names of these illegal voters. After all, it should be easy as pie to catch them: they have to give their names and addresses to register and vote. Odd thing, out of five million illegal registrants, the Senator, after a week of looking, couldn't provide me the name of one. Not one.

Another Republican politician, this one in New Mexico, the sponsor of the voter ID law there, said on the floor of the State Legislature that she had the names of two illegal voters. Well, that's a start.

I called her, Representative Justine Fox-Young (yes, that's her name, and she has the ID to prove it).

Q. Justine, you've uncovered felony criminals [illegal voting is a jail-time crime in every state]. Do you havethe names?

A. Oh, yes!

Q. Really? Wow! Did you turn these names over to the US Attorney?

A. Well, no ….

Q. You had evidence of a crime and you didn't have the bad guys arrested?

A. Not exactly ….

Fox-Young promised to send me the names of the illegal voters. The names never arrived. But shortly thereafter, based on her claim, the Legislature passed, and Governor Bill Richardson signed, a voter ID law certain to knock out Hispanic citizens. (In fairness to Richardson, I should note that he forced the Republicans to drastically alter their bill.)

Our investigations team talked to some of New Mexico's allegedly illegal voters.

In 2004, the Catholic Church organized a bus and caravan to take newly registered Chicano "low-riders" to a Roswell, New Mexico polling station. The white officials turned away several of the young Hispanics for presenting the wrong ID. Maybe the middle initial on the voter form was missing from the driver's license, or "Jr." was added. No perfect match, no vote: a gotcha! set of rules that seemed to apply only to voters of a darker hue.

One of the rejected young Chicanas said she wouldn't return to try again to vote; one round of humiliation was enough. "They don't want me to vote there anyway," she said. And they don't.

But hey, what's wrong with requiring voter ID? I'll give you a million reasons. Since 2004, when 300,000 citizens lost their right to vote because of ID challenges, the number of states that have passed voter ID laws has quadrupled. Expect the challenges to quadruple as well, to over a million in the upcoming 2008 presidential election. Does ID challenges make a difference? In New Mexico, George Bush's victory over John Kerry by 5,900 votes can be completely accounted for by minority provisional ballots rejected. ID was the key.

In Louisiana, the law says voters may be asked to produce a photo ID. A study conducted by the US Department of Justice discovered that Black voters are only one-fifth as likely to have photo ID's as white voters. (That figure may be optimistic - as Justice took the survey before Black voters' ID washed away with Hurricane Katrina.)

In New Mexico, in Louisiana, in Georgia, in Alabama and in Florida, it's the same story. It's not a random set of voters who lose out on ID challenges; it's voters of color.

Four years ago, the Jim Crow era ended when biased impediments to voting were struck down by the courts and Congress: poll taxes, "literacy" tests, citizenship tests that blocked Blacks more than whites. From that time until now, almost every state has accepted your signature matched to prior records as proof you're a legal voter. Now we're going to change this system to prevent the crime of folks voting more than once and the crime of aliens voting. The odd thing about these crimes: they virtually don't exist. Yet to prevent crimesthat aren't committed, we are allowing elections officials to commit a greater crime: stopping legal voters - especially new, young, Hispanic voters - from having their piece of our democracy.

Who was behind these viciously undemocratic, racist José Crow attack on brown-skinned voters? His initials are Karl Rove. In 2006, I smelled out the link to Rove, then White House political chief, when I reached out to the US Attorney for New Mexico.

That US Attorney, David Iglesias, had indeed investigated the "illegal" voters identified by Fox-Young, working from a list of 150 sent to him by Republican officials. After marching all over the mesas with the FBI, Iglesias found exactly zero cases to prosecute.

So, finding folks innocent, Iglesias did not arrest them. That was a mistake - at least for his career. Karl Rove, visiting New Mexico, heard from the state's Republican Party chiefs that Iglesias was not bringing prosecutions and would not continue the witchhunt for "illegal" voters. Iglesias contends that Rove took the Republican complaint to the Oval Office. There, a man who goes by the alias, "The Decider," decided to fire Iglesias and other US Attorneys who wouldn’t agree to phony prosecutions of innocent voters.

Iglesias told me, "This voter fraud thing is the bogeyman. It was designed to scare up, rile the [Republican] base. I looked into [the fraud allegations] ...We didn't find the evidence."

I met with Iglesias at the park overlooking the Statue of Liberty in New York. The wistful ex-prosecutor, who has returned to his former post with the Navy as a JAG lawyer, said, "Looking back, I mean I feel like I was set up; that they really felt that I would go forward with some half-baked prosecutions and hope for a guilty plea. That's not what a legitimate federal prosecutor does."

(Rove won't respond to BBC's requests for his views - nor respond to a subpoena from Congress to explain his involvement in the firings.)

Whatever Rove's political motives, I did have to ask if there's a legitimate reason for these new ID laws. I challenged the leader of the New Mexico Catholic Charities voter drive, Santiago Juarez, to answer Ms. Fox-Young's charge that, without voter ID, his new citizens could steal elections by voting more than once using someone else's name.

Santiago replied, "How do you organize thousands of people to vote twice? Hell, it's hard enough organizing them to vote once!"

*********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Obtain the film on DVD of Palast's investigations of US elections, including exclusive interviews with fired US Attorney David Iglesias, at www.GregPalast.com. Watch the trailer for The Election Files here.

Three reasons Congress is wrongheaded in Iraq

This is from an email from Cindy Sheehan, commenting on an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which Karl Rove complains about how Congress is threatening to screw up Iraq and the Middle East by trying to end the War in Iraq. Cindy agrees they're screwing up, but for failing to end the War...

There are at least three errors with the Congressional “New Direction in Iraq.” First of all the timelines are again “non-binding” and not worth the breath it takes to talk about them, or the ink and paper that it takes to write them (or the headache one gets to think about them). With 2007 being the deadliest year for our US troops and the people of Iraq (did anyone not see---except Bush and Congress that a “surge” which Karl says is working in his laughable op-ed---would not increase the bloodshed?) and the violence predictably picking up after the holy month of Ramadan, by the end of 2008, we should tragically witness the deaths of hundreds of more US troops and thousands of more Iraqis, with even more fleeing their homes to take an inhumane refugee status.

The second thing wrong with a short-term handover is that any amount of money for a war that is wrong, is also wrong. Using the drug addiction illustration again, if one of my children asked me for money to buy crack, but I told them abusing crack is wrong, but “I will give you more money to abuse crack: but only until March! By March, you must have your crack addiction under control because I won’t give you one more penny to abuse crack!” My child would take the money with relief to continue his/her habit knowing that by March (from my past performance of always- buckling under to his/her pressure) I would give him/her more money, anyway. Then between now and March, I could not once tell my child that abusing crack is “harmful/illegal” because I have given my “implied consent” by funding his/her habit. Congress is reaffirming the implied consent theory of war continually by feeding George’s habit for chaos and killing.

The third reason the offer of partial blood money to George is a mistake is that the Constitution divides powers between the branches. Congress (read—Democratic Leadership) has forgotten that the institution is a co-equal branch with the Executive and Judicial. I studied the Constitution in Civic class for my entire eighth grade year and it has only been amended twice since then, once granting suffrage to 18 year olds in 1971 after they had been dying for years in Vietnam (27th Amendment) Incidentally, with the Every Child Left Behind Act, our children, today, learn very little, if anything about civics, history, or critical thinking---that’s education in a fascist state, my friend. Anyhow, in eighth grade I learned that Congress has the power and duty to declare war and pay for war and the Executive has the duty to wage the war. In Congress’ New Direction, the bill has elements that “redefine” the mission in Iraq. I agree that the mission needs to be radically redefined to no mission at all. However, the president, who is clearly irresponsible, to say the very least, is well within his Constitutional right to veto any bill like this and within his Constitutional powers to wage the war as he sees fit. Have I said lately, that he isn’t fit, at all?

The only power that Congress has to end this war (and effectively and affectively redefining the mission), to the chagrin of Karl who is clearly out of step with reality and the country, is to not give George Bush one more penny of China’s money, let alone 50 billion more of Chinese dollars.