Are Rove’s Missing E-mails the Smoking Guns of the Stolen 2004 Election?
E-mails being sought from Karl Rove’s computers, and recent revelations about critical electronic conflicts of interest, may be the smoking guns of Ohio’s stolen 2004 election. A thorough recount of ballots and electronic files, preserved by a federal lawsuit, could tell the tale.The major media has come to focus on a large batch of electronic communications which have disappeared from the server of the Republican National Committee, and from White House advisor Rove’s computers. The attention stems from the controversial firing of eight federal prosecutors by Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales.
But the time frame from which these e-mails are missing also includes a critical late night period after the presidential election of 2004. In these crucial hours, computerized vote tallies may have been shifted to move the Ohio vote count from John Kerry to George W. Bush, giving Bush the presidency.
Earlier that day, Rove and Bush flew into Columbus. Local election officials say they met with Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in Columbus. Also apparently in attendance was Matt Damschroder, executive director of the Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections.
These four men, along with Ohio GOP chair Bob Bennett, were at the core of a multi-pronged strategy that gave Bush Ohio’s twenty Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency. Bennett and Damschroder held key positions on election boards in the state’s two most populous counties, with the biggest inner city concentrations of Democratic voters.
There were four key phases to the GOP’s election theft strategy:
1. Prior to the election, the GOP focused on massive voter disenfranchisement, with a selective reduction of voter turnout in urban Democratic strongholds. Blackwell issued confusing and contradictory edicts on voter eligibility, registration requirements, and provisional ballots; on shifting precinct locations; on denial and misprinting of absentee ballots, and more. Among other things, election officials, including Bennett, stripped nearly 300,000 voters from registration rolls in heavily Democratic areas in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo.
2. On election day, the GOP focussed on voter intimidation, denial of voting rights to legally eligible ex-felons, denial of voting machines to inner city precincts, malfunctioning of those machines, destruction of provisional ballots and more.
In Franklin, Cuyahoga and other urban counties, huge lines left mostly African-American voters waiting in the rain for three hours and more. A Democratic Party survey shows more than 100,000 voters failed to vote due to these lines, which plagued heavily Democratic inner city precincts (but not Republican suburban ones) throughout the state. The survey shows another 50,000 ballots may have been discarded at the polling stations. In addition, to this day, more than 100,000 machine-rejected and provisional ballots remain uncounted. The official Bush margin of victory was less than 119,000 votes.
3. After the final tabulation of the votes, and the announcement that Bush had won, the GOP strategy focussed on subverting a statewide recount. A filing by the Green and Libertarian Parties required Ohio’s 88 county boards of election to conduct random precinct samplings, to be followed by recounts where necessary.
A lawsuit was filed to delay the seating of Ohio’s Electoral College delegation until after the recount was completed. Among other things, the plaintiffs sued to get access to Rove’s laptop. But Blackwell rushed to certify the delegation before a recount could be completed. The issue became moot, and the suit was dropped. In retaliation, Blackwell tried to impose legal sanctions on the attorneys who filed it.
But two felony convictions have thus far resulted from what prosecutors have called the “rigging” of the recount in Cuyahoga County (where Bennett has been forced to resign his chairmanship of the board of elections). More are likely to follow.
The practices that led to these convictions were apparently repeated in many of Ohio’s 88 counties. The order to violate the law—or at least tacit approval to do so—is almost certain to have come from Blackwell.
4. Ultimately, however, it is the GOP’s computerized control of the vote count that may have been decisive. And here is where Rove’s e-mails, and the wee hours of the morning after the election, are crucial.
Despite the massive disenfranchisement of Ohio Democrats, there is every indication John Kerry won Ohio 2004. Exit polls shown on national television at 12:20am gave Kerry a clear lead in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico. These “purple states” were Democratic blue late in the night, but, against virtually impossible odds, all turned Bush red by morning.
Along the way, Gahanna, Ohio’s “loaves & fishes” vote count, showed 4,258 ballots for Bush in a precinct where just 638 people voted. Voting machines in Youngstown and Columbus lit up for Bush when Kerry’s name was pushed. Rural Republican precincts registered more than 100% turnouts, while inner city Democratic ones went as low as 7%. Warren County declared a “Homeland Security” alert, removed the ballot count from public scrutiny, then recorded a huge, unlikely margin for Bush.
These and many more instances of irregularities and theft were reported at www.freepress.org and then confirmed by U.S. Representative John Conyers and others who researched the election.
But the most critical reversals may have come as exit polls indicated that despite massive Democratic disenfranchisement, and even with preliminary vote count manipulations, Kerry would win Ohio by 4.2%, a margin well in excess of 200,000 votes.
The key to that reversal may be electronic. It has now become widely known that the same web-hosting firm that served a range of GOP websites, including the one for the Republican National Committee, also hosted the official site that Blackwell used to report the Ohio vote count.
This astonishing conflict of interest has been reported at the epluribusmedia.org on-line investigative service. Cross-postings have come from luaptifer at Dailykos and blogger Joseph Cannon’s Cannonfire.blogspot.com. They all confirm that the RNC tech network’s hosting firm is SMARTech.com, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. SMARTech hosts georgew.bush.com, mc.org and gop.com among other Republican web domains, in a bank basement.
Furthermore, the same hosting site that handled redirections from Blackwell’s “official” site also handled the White House e-mail accounts that have become central to investigations of the Gonzales purge of eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were themselves involved in vote fraud investigations.
Conflicts of interest in programming services and remote-access capability appear throughout the RNC’s computer networks, Rove’s secret White House e-mail, and the electronic vehicles used by Blackwell to finally reveal his “official” presidential vote counts for Ohio 2004.
One factor may be Ohio’s electronic touch-screen voting systems, on which were cast more than 800,000 votes in an election decided by about one-seventh that total. Such vulnerabilities, among other things, have been confirmed in exhaustive reports by Conyers’s Committee, by the Government Accountability Office, by the Carter-Baker Commission, by Princeton University, by the Brennan Center, and by others.
But overall, the electronic record of every vote in Ohio was transmitted to the Secretary of State’s office, and hosted in real time in Chattanooga. Under such circumstances, the joint hosting of the White House e-mail system and accessibility by Blackwell and Rove to the same computer networks linked to the Ohio vote count, takes on an added dimension.
Mike Connell, a Republican computer expert, helped create the software for both Ohio’s official 2004 election web site, and for the Bush campaign’s partisan web site during the 2000 election. The success of Connell’s GovTech Solutions has been attributed by Connell to his being “loyal to my network,” including the Bush family.
Blackwell shared those loyalties. Like Connell, he worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign, serving as its Ohio co-chair. He was also in control of the vote count that was being reported on software Bush loyalist Connell helped design.
It was in a crucial period after midnight on election night 2004 that these paired conflicts of interest may have decided the election. As exit polls showed a decisive Kerry victory, there was an unexplained 90-minute void in official reporting of results. By this time, most of the vote counts were coming in from rural areas, which are traditionally Republican, and which, ironically, usually report their results earlier than the Democratic urban areas.
In this time span, Kerry’s lead morphed into a GOP triumph. To explain this “miraculous” shift, Rove invented a myth of the greatest last-second voting surge in US history, allegedly coming from late-voting fundamentalist Republicans. No significant evidence exists to substantiate this claim. In fact, local news reports indicate the heaviest turnouts in most rural areas came early on election day, rather than later.
According to a January 13, 2005, release from Cedarville University, a small Ohio-based Christian academy, Connell’s GovTech Solutions helped make the shared server system run “like a champ…through the early morning hours as users from around the world looked to Ohio for their election results.”
After 2am, despite exit polls showing very much the opposite outcome, those results put Bush back in the White House.
In January, 2005, the U.S. Congress hosted the first challenge to a state’s Electoral College delegation in our nation’s history. At the time, the compromised security of the official Ohio electronic reporting systems was not public knowledge. But the first attempt to subpoena Karl Rove’s computer files had already failed.
Now a second attempt to gain such access is being mounted as the Gonzales scandal deepens.
Congressman Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) has raised “particular concerns about Karl Rove” and his electronic communications about the Gonzales firings.
Rove claims both his own computer records and the RNC’s servers have been purged of e-mails through the time the Ohio vote was being reversed. Rove’s attorney, Robert Kuskin, has told a Congressional inquiry that Rove mistakenly believed his messages to the RNC “were being archived” there.
But the RNC says it has no e-mail records for Rove before 2005. Rob Kelner, an RNC lawyer says efforts to recreate the lost records have had some success. But it’s not yet known whether communications from the 2004 election can be retrieved.
Nor is it known whether the joint access allowed to top GOP operatives Rove and Blackwell was responsible for the election-night reversal that put Bush back in the White House.
But there remains another avenue by which the real outcome of Ohio 2004 could be discovered. Longstanding federal law protected Ohio’s ballots and other election documentation prior to September 3, 2006. Blackwell gave clear orders that these crucial records were to be destroyed on that date.
Prior to the expiration of the federal statutory protection, a civil rights lawsuit was filed in the federal court of Judge Algernon Marbley, asking that the remaining records be preserved. The request was granted in what has become known as the King-Lincoln Bronzeville suit (co-author Bob Fitrakis is an attorney in the case, and Harvey Wasserman is a plaintiff).
Thus, by federal law, the actual ballots and electronic records should be available for the kind of exhaustive recount that was illegally denied—or “rigged,” as prosecutors in Cleveland have put it—by Blackwell, Bennett and their cohorts the first time around.
Ohio’s newly-elected Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has agreed to take custody of these materials, and to bring them to a central repository, probably in Columbus.
This means that an exhaustive recount could show who really did win the presidential election of 2004.
It may also be possible to learn what roles—electronic or otherwise— Karl Rove and J. Kenneth Blackwell really did play during those crucial 90 minutes in the deep night, when the presidency somehow slipped from John Kerry to George W. Bush.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at http://www.freepress.org/ and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, from the New Press. Fitrakis is publisher, and Wasserman is senior editor, of http://www.freepress.org/ where this story was first published.
Do these people actually think that we’re all SO stupid that we can’t figure out they STOLE the elections!!!! Good grief! Their brazen actions in Florida and Ohio are criminal and should be treated as such. Throw the bums out, before they do any more harm!
As I see it, there are two ways in which the truth can be discovered. Either involves someone blowing the whistle because:
1. that person has been offered immunity for coming forward and spilling the beans, versus prosecution if they don’t, and/or
2. that person’s conscience finally eats away at the protective barrier separating them from the knowledge of what actually took place
Meanwhile, those of us who believe in a higher power (and I DON’T mean the United States Supreme Court) say prayers for social and political justice daily, while we watch the ugliness of what is currently known as “life on Earth” coming up to the surface to be exposed, only to be pushed down again by those who hold the rest of us hostage to the carnage, the lies, the deceit, and the corporate-political control games.
My belief is either that humans will revolt against the structure that is literally and metaphorically killing all of us, or Mother Earth will do it herself. On cynical days such as today, I care not how it comes about. I just want the temple to the profane to come down.
So, if the Ohio voting results were changed in Bush’s favor. What is to become of Roberts and Alito. Since Bush would be considered a squatter among other things. Would his Supreme Court appointments be considered null and void. Would they willingly give up their posts? How quickly would Kerry be sworn in. Would Kerry become the front-runner in ‘08? Would Edwards stay on the Kerry ticket or keep running. This would be a way better story line than anything on the Sapranos.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reported on this in his Rolling Stone article which the MSM ignored. The MSM will ignore this article, too. An exhaustive recount proving a Kerry victory and a Bush theft, if it happens, will be dismissed as “old news.”
“The truth shall set ye free.” I wish. In the meantime, let’s pass along this article to people we know so that they will be aware of what is going on, add to its credibility.
(Would that we could get rid of the Bush Supreme Court abominations.)
My cynicism knows no bounds. I absolutely believe that there is a 50-50 chance that there will either be a rigged election in ‘08, or that Bush will find some reason, perhaps another “crisis”, that will allow him to declare Martial Law and suspend elections. I am not optomistic, given today’s announcement that ABC will end Rosie O’Donnell’s relationship with “The View” for having the temerity to question the official version of the 9/11 attacks. It’s obvious that those of us who care about the truth and democracy are systematically being crushed. I don’t think the public has the will or the energy to act decisively, before the troops drive down Main Street and the curfews take hold.
The stunning thing is, this kind of evidence, widely available to any curious reporter, would have led to mass outrage and a complete change in governance in any kind of real democracy.
Missing e-mails? Stolen elections? Where? Who? How? You must be joking. Not in this country. No way.
In other countries, it has been a mass public refusal to accept rigged election results that throws the crooks out of office.
In the US, the sheep just say “baaaaaahhhhhh”.
Someone thinks the chances of a rigged election in 2008 is only 50-50? After the last two have clearly been successfully stolen? Why would they stop?
When millions of Americans take to the streets and demand that this stop, that’s when it will stop. That’s what has stopped it in other places in the world. As long as we all just sit in front of our TVs and say “baaaaaaahhhh”, it ain’t gonna stop.
I’m afraid I have to agree with “Truthteller.” The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on September 30th, does indeed empower the president to impose martial law in the event of a “terrorist incident.” I have this nagging feeling that “something bad” might happen just as the reign of the decider is coming to a close. And goodness me, if the country needed him to stay in office, and be strong, and protect us poor frightened little citizens, how could he up and leave? Surely he could be declared “emperor-for-life-ordained-by-god.” Boy, do I hope my gnawing fear that this could happen is just an excess of cynicism!
Americans aren’t sheep, we’re just accustomed to thinking our elections are run well, and in most of the country they are. I think I’ve been all over this stolen election story, but I have to admit Florida 2000 was a revelation to me. Now try to convince people who never thought about stolen elections, live in states where the system works, don’t have complaints with the outcomes, or dislike the outcomes but find other reasons for Bush’s “wins” make more sense, like fundamentalists turning out to vote against gay marriage. It’s especially tough when those alternative explanations make some sense, like gay marriage was indeed used to boost conservative turnout, and the GOP had caught and surpassed Democratic GOTV. Also, never in US history has an incumbent president lost with a war in progress, and Iraq is not the first to go poorly. I still think Bush stole both elections, but they were close if accurately counted, and I think that’s what most people find hard to sort through. We have to find proof both definitive and easy to comprehend, which is why nothing is more important right now than those “lost” RNC e-mails.
ericf,
Your post is as long as unconvincing.
The correct response to to stolen elections is throwing the
bastards out. PERIOD.
eurobelle
well you dont pull any punches do you?
mostly i find myself in agreement with your posts but your bedside manner is atrocious!
as far as stolen elections go its like this- who freaking cares anymore - the USA was disaster for most everything its touched except for the white male frat club that ran the revvolution of 1776 - ask the native americans about electoral transparency - ask the slaves and the desencdentgs of slaves - ask the mountains stripped of their forests and metals- the rivers robbed fo their salmon the salmon robeed of their rivers the bears robbed of their futures - the albatross lost to us all - wake up to the costs of this juggernaut -
Hey Wasserman & Fitrakis!
Good work. Way to go. Keep it up
Although Ohio’s electorate college-vote won’t be changed (Bush won’t be saying “Oops, sorry,” and hand power to Kerry, no matter how few are shown to have voted for him) - revelation of (another) previous stealing of the presidency will hopefully change a lot. Like establishing mandatory paper-receipt vote-counting nationwide. That’ll be an important victory in itself.
Quite another matter is that Bush by deliberately lying is now responsible for MORE THAN HALF A MILLION DEAD people. Only 3333 of them US soldiers (today). Whatever the circumstances, he should be locked away for life, no privileges, to the worst treatment the Geneva conventions allow (intn’l interpretations of the conventions, not Bush’s). Make Bush a Rudolf Hess - a living symbol of a vanquished past.
(If I formulate my hopes any stronger I might get arrested and Gitmo’ed. So I leave it to imagination and word of mouth to offer other solutions. One tip: a lot of pain can come from a simple steel brush, a lot of table-salt, and years of shirtless nights tied up face down…)
The majority of so-called journalists working for the Mass Media are nothing but a bunch of robots that need to watch the Wizard of Oz, once again, to re-discover the integration process that makes us human.
Cowards have always followed the path of least resistance.
monter..
I can’t believe it. Iraquis are bombed, homeless are homeless
abused in the workplace are abused, criminals are
destroying the world etc. I am right, but I am supposed to
have barbaric bed manners - no matter what, I am nice, no matter what I am smiling, no matter what I am following Dale Carnegie. In your dreams.
yeah eurobelle
thats what i mean.
That is also what I mean. Continue smiling.
There is only so much one can grab without paying for it.
Even Carnegie won’t help.
by the way - i wasnt criticizing you - just noting that your style of posting is a bit more hammering then others here on the nice-nice american (i presume) left - want some trail mix or will the soy smoothie be all. (by the way - this is intended - here on the wryly challenged internet as a kind of self-implicating humor - but quick gotta run my tofu pups are burning.
Why is Blackwell not in prison?
“mostly i find myself in agreement with your posts but your bedside manner is atrocious!”
These are terms of endearment?
From the Carnegie perspective, everything human is atrocious.
From human perspective, everything Carnegie is atrocious.
:;
clyde
Your question is too narrow.
Why are all of them not in a well equipped dungeon?
well calling someone’s bedside manner (especially if said person happens to be not a doctor) anything usually implies a kind of levity that supercedes the adjective assigned - in this case “atrocious” - bedside manner (if you’ll forgive my explication here) is the way the doc delivers the bad news -
and anyway - i agree with you mostly - as if our agreement means anything substantial - meanwhile mountains and rivers and all of theirr inhabitants die.
who is this carnegie you speak of? anyway - didnt he used to race soapbox derby cars - or was he a drugstore magnate?
If this does prove to be the smoking gun, it could lead to a mushroom cloud for the Bush Reich. I think every Repugnican congressman who is facing reelection would run like hell to disassociate themselves from this gang. Impeachment would be absolutely on the table and very likely that would be the end of the Bush nightmare.
Don’t gripe, act! I’ve been nominated for my local board of elections, and when I am elected I am going to see to it that we have fair elections and that the voting procedures and counting mechanisms are transparent to every eligible voter.
The crowd that watches FOX “news” or listens to Rush & Savage and HATE rightwing radio will be convinced–as the ill child is given a mild hypnotic aspirin–that it’s all LEFTWING nonsense. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Like others on this site, I just find the 911 “thing” too convenient, when all 3 branches of government and a tightly controlled corporate press were prizes to be seized… that something BIG was needed that the public NOT demand a vote recount in Florida in 2000. What this group will sink to in order to hold power is already evident in their easy dismissal of half a million lives on the basis of a “fixed” cause for war. The travesty is so profound, the wound so grand that it’s almost difficult to take in, to stare so fully at the BEAST in our midst… many are ON anti-depressants, use alcohol, or sugar as “drug,” to anesthetize themselves to what IS going on. And for that percentage that is awake, the capacity to use truth to make real change is everywhere being thwarted. Face it… this nation has undergone a coup. What Naomi Wolf shared yesterday on the 10 steps to fascism, I too, made note of… in some ways it’s so subtle because life APPEARS to go on as before, similar to global warming… a community floods, we rebuild, and go back to doing exactly what we WERE doing. There is an incredulity factor in the face of embracing the magnitude of what IS in our midst. And like the lesson learned in Driver’s ED… even when we realize it’s time to apply the brakes, the ‘car’ still moves at the speed it was traveling, carried by its own momentum. In other words, were we to bring a stop to chronic abuse of tangible organic resources, the EFFECTS would still come down the pike. That comment is not a cause NOT to act, but it holds true with a great many things. It’s going to take so much courage, stamina and patience to put the pieces back together… and they probably will never fit into the forms they once held.
monte …,
I am talking of course about the author of a book which was translated into many languages as “How to use and manipulate people.” In his book, Carnegie gives advice how to be successful. His first rules are: “DON’T ARGUE,” “SMILE,” “something similar to the first.” (don’t remember)
I think we’re paying for this endless, opportunistic, nonsensical smiling.
I once saw an interesting picture with a director of a
museum in New York, his wife and a douzen or so Louvre people. Two people had “cheese” smiles, the rest had very grim faces. Guess who was smiling? The guy who is known for firing Harvard Ph.D.s with a smile (usually a day after the employee parent’s death) and his properly smiling wife.
well all for now good night - remeber today is the fourth anniversary of the death of the poet Ted Joans - drink a glass of wine to his memory
TED JOANS LIVES
How do conservatives get away with murder time and again? Maybe the more money-power one has to conserve, the more conservative one gets, the more authoritarian, the more corrupt, greedy, lying, sociopathic, racist, fearful, warmongering, criminal, manipulative, rationalizing, dogmatic, freakish, desperate, superstitious, impudent, insolent, agressive and on and on.
Money-power ruled Hitler and Bush on the right and Stalin and Pol Pot on the left. The best solution may be to limit their money-power permanently with Green Party grassroots democracy.
It has become increasingly clear that no matter what (further) illegal acts the Neo Con/fascist regime in the White House are found to have committed, the Dems will not impeach. They are more interested in regaining control of the Executive Branch and a larger majority in Congress than in performing their highest sworn duty.
For that alone they do not deserve re-election, and I for one will not vote for any candidates from my state that have jumped on the Pelosi bandwagon - this includes Sens. Schumer and Clinton, and Rep. Mike McNulty.
I do not buy the argument that there is “so much to do” instead of “wasting time” on impeachment, nor do I believe that by impeaching this crew there would be a great voter backlash against the Dems in ‘08.
I have also sent correspondence informing them of my position. Everyone on this site should do the same with their Congress members.
There’s a problem there, though. If the Dems don’t know the mandate that got them elected — and we need to petition them to do their jobs — then something is horribly amiss somewhere.
What causes this disconnect? Don’t rich & reality-disconnected politicians in their ranks ever do what Siddharta (Hermann Hesse’s version) ever did? Set aside the three piece suit and pinstripes for an evening (the mafia shouldn’t mind), put on some jeans and a baseball cap. The ought to go to the local bars, coffeeshops, etc. and simply strike up casual talk with ordinary people. Quit listening to millionaires and billionaires, think-tanks (proxies for the same), and reconnect to the ordinary people they represent.
But I cannot reiterate enough that when it comes to e-mails, there is no need to petition the RNC to cough up the hard drives, tapes, etc. Keep in mind that the standard RFC’s for e-mail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email don’t require encryption. It’s very likely all plain-text when it hops router-to-router. Now if the NSA, etc. is doing its job in monitoring federal/state machines against unauthorized snooping, hacking, usage, etc. the Dems merely need to call the spooks and obtain the logs. Why hasn’t anyone suggested this in the media? Doesn’t the NSA sniff incoming/outgoing traffic at sensitive sites? Are the Dems not aware of the plain-text nature of e-mail? Is this witch-hunt just for show? Show us the goods.
ericf and Paul, I don’t think those emails will be found. Like Nixon’s 18 minutes, they’re gone. My son who knows computers tokd me you can erase hard drives. Not simple, but doable. And probably happening as we write. And how many people at the NSA ae wlling to stand up and ruin their careers and lives coming forward? Unless there is a whistleblower in the crowd who is not a good employee, I will bet money that’s moot. When I was in nuursing school, they went to a lot of trouble to tell us what happens to the lives of whistleblowers. Wrecked careers, divorces, suicides.
Counting the ballots is something else, but just how much attention did the mainstream media give to the stolen election of 2000 in Florida? And how did they treat the brownshirt tactics of Republican staffers coming down and storming the election offices and stopping the recount until the Supreme Court could give the election to Bush? Did the police intervene? Did anyone at all seem to care - except for a few disgruntled sore losers (us)? Did anyone else regard it as democracy disrupted?
This nation is acting like there’s Valium in the drinking water, like freedom and democracy are concrete things that can’t be taken away so they don’t even have to pay any attention to what is going on or connect any of the dots all over the place out there. Yeah, when one party gets too carried away with itself the electorate stirs itself and there is a changing of the guard. Then it’s back to business as usual. The public doesn’t expect much from the new boys in town and they don’t get much. Some token concessions thrown at the zoo animals to quiet them down and then on to the real business at hand, making deals with the corporations. \
I’m not saying give up, I’m saying we have to fight for what we want. It’s not going to fall into our laps. Look at what Fitrakis and Wasserman went through just to get this far.
This article doesn’t really tell us what Fitrakis and Waserman went through, but I’ve followed their journey, as many of you have, and they spent two years of getting their heads banged against the wall. But they never gave up.
kathyodat: I’ve worked for a large university as a programmer for almost 10 years. If we think about e-mails just as “files”, then you are correct. But the way the internet is laid out, the topology of it, requires that tcp/ip “packets” go from server to server, router to router, often passing through half a dozen or more servers. The packets include some information about where they came from, where they are going, and the order in which to reassemble them. There are programs out there that system administrators use routinely to monitor/safeguard their networks. Even high-quality open source ones, like WireShark: http://www.wireshark.org/, formerly named Ethereal.
I don’t think it too demanding on the NSA, etc. to produce what it might have. Don’t they answer to both the Executive and Congressional branches? Someone accused of electronically rigging our elections or subverting rule of law, whether citizen or no, should be the sort of entity they’re charged with investigating I assume. If they got the goods, let’s have them. And set this country on its right track.
Seriously — is this just a charade witch-hunt, aren’t the intelligence agencies doing their jobs, do they only answer to the Executive Branch, what’s up? Hinging this whole thing on solely whether we can get hard drives and recover some files misses the larger realm of possibilities. Deliberately?
Somebody should be in some serious trouble for “not saving” Rove’s emails.
Now you all know how the ordinary Germans felt like during WWII! Any one read “They thought they were FREE”, I do not remember the author but I believe the person whom gave it to me bought it on the “The Nation” magazine web site, which is www.thenationmart.com, or thenation.com for general reading. They have a great book section.
The book covers 3 family’s from before the war until ten years after, it will open your eyes as to what is going on here. I have said from the start that we were being and been lied to, and I even made the statement about the Germans, people dam near killed me, but in the end I am the one who was right, but yet these republicans will not see the truth, they think they can say it and it will be so, never will work out the way they want, but they will blame everyone else for it. It is not the Dems fault, they have only been in charge since January 11, 2007 not even 6 months and you expect them to change everything on a dime? Give us all a break, it takes time, more money then anyone can get and they do not have the numbers they need! Lieberman may be a Dem but he votes Republican. We need less republicans.
To Seditious, impeachment is not off the table on Tuesday Dennis Kuchinch entered articles of such for Cheney. Also my representative is a republican so telling him that I will not vote for a Dem is just what he wants to hear. I may have been a republican in the very early 70’s but I learned fast and found out I did not fit with them at all, they are all war all the time. We only have to options and the primary is almost hear so VOTE, that is something only 59% of the people do, in my little town outside the city, less then 24% voted, we went for Kerry but less then 1/4 of the electorate bothered to do it. Maybe that is why no one believes anyone any more, people talk but they never do the walk.
Our electoral system is based on who can come up with the most bribes and we still wonder why Dems won’t move. How far can campaign finance reform get when it is designed by the same bribees. Clinton said, “we won’t disarm unilaterally”. Don’t hold your breath thinking the Repugs will.
There are smart people here giving great analyses and ideas. I hate to say it, but you’re not getting anywhere. This system is being carefully adjusted by the oligarchy to keep us thinking that we are getting somewhere when we’re not because we’re playing by their rules and they own the two parties. Can anyone deny that?
The only way I see that the progressive majority can float to the top is if we unite at the grassroots under our own party, the Green Party. The party that takes no Big Money bribes. We are spinning our wheels with the Democrats, as the elite has planned. But wait, as soon as we get Kucinich in there, we will be saved! Have I got a bridge to sell you.
More proof of BushCo’s complete takeover of the American Media.
As a lifelong Ohioan, it galls me to think that our election was stolen in 2004 and NO ONE, not one single person, has been held to account for it. Everyone knows that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were flat out stolen and no one has ever been made to stand account for any of it.
Karl Rove may as well be called “Teflon Man”, because he keeps slipping out of the hands of those who are trying to nail him for all the dirty deeds he’s committed. All you have to do is to look into his beady eyes to see that there is a dishonest look about him. The same look can be seen in Dubya’s eyes. They’re all crooks, every one of them, and ought to be thrown out into the streets and publicly shamed for the damage that they have done to this country.
I see Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over everything that has happened, and someone needs to nail this guy once and for all. He is, as far as I am concerned, the “Dirty TricksMeister” of this administration and what he has done makes the Watergate crooks look like a bunch of amateurs by comparison. A clever 5th grader could find those supposedly deleted e-mails faster than a bunch of bungling Keystone Kops tripping over themselves trying to find them.
Can you say, “Smoking Gun”? Find the e-mails, find the evidence, make it public and bring down Emperor Bush and his corrupt cronies. Send them all to Gitmo and throw away the key.
We all know it has been stolen since 2000. What the hell can we do by 2008 to stop this criminality? Somebody?
“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Smoking Guns
“Lost in Minutiae.”
When will we begin to address the bread and butter issues?
Social Security (now under attack by the David M. Walker the Comptroller General of the United States)
Medicare (also under attack as above)
Universal free healthcare for all
Universal free education for all.
A middle class wage for all.
A 40 hour work week maximum
A home for all. No homeless people.
Public Parks and recreation for all.
Broadband high speed access for all
and so on and so on.
E pluribus unum
YEAH!
I’ve been pushing all the time.
Truthteller . . .
Don’t worry about Rosie . .. she was not fired from The View . . . rather ABC wanted her to SIGN A THREE YEAR CONTRACT . . . AND SHE ONLY WANTED TO SIGN FOR ONE MORE YEAR.
Also, Rosie will be seen still on occasion on The View —
she will be returning for certain programs/segments — issues.
Truthteller quote: ABC will end Rosie O’Donnell’s relationship with “The View” for having the temerity to question the official version of the 9/11 attacks.
Evidently, my first attempt at this message wasn’t posted?
Truthteller —
Rosie O’Donnell wasn’t fired from the View . . .
ABC wanted her to sign a three year contract –
and she only wanted to commit to one more year.
She will, however, be seen still on The View on occasion as she will return for certain segments/issues.
Missing (deleted) emails can easily be discovered and retrieved. I am a Computer forensic and I do this for a living. Give me Rove’s laptop and RNC’s mail server and within few days most of those emails could be retrieved. Furthermore all the emails which, are retrieved can be proven in a court of law that are original and that none have been tampered with since deletion.
I am surprised that no one in congress is doing that already.
I am even willing to do it for free.
As far as 2008 goes, I have nodoubt that the outcome has already been programed. Do the Dems really believe that a fair election is possible in the country that Bush rules?
I have been trying to find confirmation of the Bush, Rove, Blackwell et al Columbus meeting referenced in the article. Any help?
What good is a ’smoking gun’ if it is missing?
Find the gun. Surely the NSA - or that secret room at AT&T - have Rove’s emails stored on a server somewhere… right? If they don’t have Rove’s emails, but they have every email sent by some misc housewife in Oklahoma, you can bet there was a massive cover-up. By the way, does the NSA work for us or for the ‘Bushies?’ No one ever made that quite clear……