More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll..

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Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks

We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws — a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery.

In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails. Some states encourage voter registration; others go out of their way to limit it. Some allow prisoners to vote; others permanently bar ex-felons, no matter how long they’ve stayed clean. Who can vote, where people cast ballots, and how and whether their votes are counted all depends, to a large extent, on policies set in place by secretaries of state and county elections supervisors — officials who can be as partisan, as dubiously qualified, and as nakedly ambitious as people anywhere else in politics. Here is a list — partial, but emblematic — of American democracy’s more glaring weak spots.

See the list

After about 2 hours of dragging out maps of the division between east and west Jerusalem, the wall route, the settlements, the separation between Gaza and the rest of the West Bank, and other enlightening information, he finally stood up, spread his hands across the maps and said in a voice filled with disbelief, “This is diabolical!”

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This is one of those times when the imbalance in lobbying [power] could not have been more grotesque. I had people in Congress tell me that they had two and three and four [credit industry] lobbyists come by to see them every single day for months on end. There was no one to lobby for families in financial trouble … It’s just not fair.

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From WRH:

This legislation didn’t pass by accident: it passed because it gave more power for lenders to squeeze some sectors of the middle class nearly out of existence, and make more money doing it.

One of the more damning bits of evidence of U.S. government complicity in 9/11 is that George Bush has stated, on more than one occasion, that he saw the first (1st) WTC tower struck by a plane, on TV, before he entered that Florida classroom at 9 a.m.

Listen here

Beyond just starving the public schools of essential resources, the abolition of the DCD is meant to drive teachers out of the state of Florida. Outside of the profession itself, maybe Dr. Crew understands better than anybody what is at stake in current contract negotiations. If current trends hold up, half the new teachers hired in Miami-Dade will be gone in five years, 15% of the currently employed teachers will be gone next year, and any chance to genuinely reform the schools through the Zone or Secondary School Reform will go up in smoke. Yet it is impossible to squeeze blood from a turnip and Bush has seen to it that turnips are what the district has to work with.

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Two Israeli security agents expected to testify at the trial of two men accused of fundraising for the Palestinian militant group Hamas may wear disguises and use aliases on the witness stand, a judge ruled Tuesday.

See the 6th Amendment to the US Constitution for why this is a travesty.

“The ways the government could use this information to harm you are mind-boggling. For instance, any financial discrepancy with IRS or Social Security records could result in your criminal prosecution. Knowing when you leave for work could enable police, acting under the Patriot Act, to secretly enter your home.

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However, President Bush does not have the authority to launch a war on Iran, as Congress has not authorized such a war, and it must under the Constitution.

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Grass that was genetically engineered for golf courses is growing in the wild, posing one of the first threats of agricultural biotechnology escaping from the farm in the United States, a new study says.

Creeping bentgrass was engineered to resist the popular herbicide Roundup to allow more efficient weed control on golf courses. But the modified grass could spread that resistance to the wild, becoming a nuisance itself, scientists say.

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