Bob Herbert had a column in the New York Times September 25 that by all rights deserved strong mainstream media attention based on the importance of its subject matter.

The Don Imus and Bill O'Reilly controversies pale into comparative insignificance next to what Republicans are doing to African Americans seeking the basic right of congressional representation in the seat of the nation's federal government, Washington, D.C.

Despite all the bold talk by leading Republican Party operatives that the party seeks to reach out to everyone including minorities, this claim has once more been reduced to hypocritical posturing due to the point Herbert made that is receiving so little comment within the mainstream media.  

African Americans have been rebuffed by Republicans in an attempt to secure voting rights in Congress through the creation of a congressional seat in Washington, D.C.  The Republican race card is alive and regrettably doing all too well.

Since January 2001 I have withheld the term and designation of President from the current occupant of the White House for the basic reason that he was never elected.  

The unconscionable fraud and blatant racism of the Jeb Bush-Katherine Harris team in perpetrating fraud in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath was nothing other than the kind of pernicious fascism that has reigned in banana republics and prevented honest victors from attaining office.

More of the same occurred in 2004 in Ohio, as unmasked by Robert Fitzakis and others.  Meanwhile mathematics professor Steve Freeman and others have validated the reliable exit polls that revealed John Kerry as winner of the popular vote over Bush by a 51-48 margin.  

In Ohio Ken Blackwell orchestrated the same kind of banana republic fraudulent activity to obtain that key state for Bush and Cheney.  

Dennis Kucinich took that necessary first step that scores of progressives have been urging for some time in submitting articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, a necessary first step in ending the Cheney-Bush neocon regime and its steadfast destruction of law and liberty at home and abroad.

Two points have been consistently made in this column concerning impeachment:  1) the act was designed to correct executive tyranny through the commission of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and it is therefore essential for Members of Congress to take such a step in the interest of preserving the Constitution; 2) once that a conscientious investigation has been conducted in this area there will be a strong outpouring of public opinion calling for removal of Cheney and Bush from office.

A sturdy bulwark in the fight for justice at home and abroad has been the Black Caucus.  It will be recalled that Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California rose in opposition to the Patriot Act when fellow members of both parties, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

While others endorsed the Patriot Act without either reading it or taking note of far-reaching provisions that could and eventually would through their application trample basic freedoms and liberties of American citizens, Barbara Lee stood up and announced her opposition due to an unswerving devotion to the U.S. Constitution and its principles.    

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman report that the first felony convictions of two Cleveland poll workers stemming from Ohio's stolen 2004 election "confirm that the official recount in that contested vote was, in the words of count prosecutors, `rigged.'  The question now is whether further prosecutions will reach higher up in the ranks of officials who may have been involved in illegalities throughout the rest of the state."

Fitrakis and Wasserman, who reported the following information in The Free Press, have been in the forefront on 2004 Ohio voting fraud from the beginning.  John Kerry shamefully conceded to George W. Bush in the midst of widespread evidence of vote corruption in numerous states, specifically in election-deciding Ohio.

After Kerry's concession it was the Green Party, of which Fitrakis and Wasserman are prominent members, that took a forward step for democracy and financed the recount effort in Ohio.  That state held the balance in the Electoral College.

Fitrakis and Wasserman, along with Steve Rosenfeld, are the authors of "What Happened in Ohio?" that has just been published by the New Press.  Fitzrakis was an independent candidate in the 2006 Ohio's gubernatorial election and was endorsed by the Green Party.

Recent news about Florida experiencing more voting problems prompts wags to exclaim sarcastically, "Really?  What else is new?"  Voting difficulties are now etched into Florida's firmament as indelibly as bright sunshine, sandy beaches, hurricanes, and humidity.

I can qualify as a before and after experiment pertaining to my own experiences living recently in Florida as well as what I encountered when I moved one year ago to my current home of Seattle.  The voting procedures were as different as between day and night with land of sunshine Florida occupying the level of darkness in the stark equation.

After much enthusiastic trumpeting Florida's political power elite gushed that a new and advanced age of technology had arrived with the advent of touch screen voting.  I was present when the new technology made its debut in my Fort Lauderdale precinct.

The new apparatus was being unveiled in Broward County at a time when the circumstances appeared at least superficially simple.  I turned out to vote against Mayor Jim Naugle in his umpteenth reelection attempt, spurred on once more by the local power structure.  

Will someone please inform Katherine Harris that we're ALREADY a secular nation?

The religious right you shall always have with you.  At least for the rest of the lives of anyone reading this -- the latest of my more-or-less weekly round-ups of interesting and significant posts about the religious right, from the Greater Blogosphere.  

There are those who run around predicting the imminent demise of the religious right, citing this or that reading of the tea leaves. For a quarter century, such people have been wrong, wrong, wrong (and not necessarily in that order.) So umm, don't listen to such people. They epitomize the culture of ignorance and politial expediency that has enabled the rise of the religious right for a generation. If people who profess to be concerned about the religious right, and any of the attendant issues, were more like Terrence (see on the flip) at The Republic of T, our country and by extension, the world, would be a better place.

Welcome to my more-or-less weekly round-up of interesting and signficant posts about the religious right.  

As the election season rapidly ramps-up, we are likely to see a lot of posts about the religious right, pols and electoral politics. This week, they started to emerge -- and I suspect that it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Unmitigated gall is frequently linked to appalling ignorance, the type that feeds colossal delusions of grandeur.  Such is the case with George W. Bush in his recent bold attempt to lecture Russia's President Vladimir Putin on democracy.

According to Bush, Putin has not been opening up the windows sufficiently to allow the fresh sunshine of democracy to radiate Russia.  In one of Mike Wallace's most important interviews toward the close of his long CBS career, the television journalist questioned Putin on the leader's home soil about democracy.

Putin had a quick response.  Knowing that Wallace worked for CBS, he asked bluntly about one of his veteran colleagues.  "What happened to Dan Rather?" the Russian president wanted to know. He was aware of the tragedy that occurred during the 2004 election.  

Fearful of offending the Bush White House and Karl Rove, CBS essentially bounced its veteran evening news anchorman for pursuing a story about Bush's National Guard service.  With the exception of some allegedly false documents represented by examining experts to be authentic, the story contained the solid ring of truth.  

There was evidence that Rove may have been involved in creating and planting the false documents, but that part of the story was never seriously investigated.  

CLICK TO ENLARGE Bush and Rep. Katherine Harris share intimate feelings in regards to her run for US Senate

Tampa, FL (APE) - As President Bush descended from Air Force One yesterday in Tampa Florida, he was immediately greeted by Rep. Katherine Harris, R-FL, much to the chagrin of the president's brother Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Harris latched on to the president for several minutes and was observed to speak animatedly with him as they both felt each other out over her controversial decision to attempt to unseat Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in the upcoming election. Governor Jeb Bush has gone repeatedly on record stating that he believes Harris should not seek the position because he feels she cannot win.

As if we needed more evidence, but the hits just keep coming:

Washington defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade admitted yesterday in federal court that he attempted to illegally influence Defense Department contracting officials and tried to curry favor with two House members, in addition to lavishing more than $1 million in cash, cars, a boat, antiques and other bribes on convicted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).
The new admissions, including details that identify Reps. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Va.) and Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) as recipients of illegal campaign contributions, are contained in Wade's agreement to plead guilty to four criminal charges stemming from his role in the Cunningham probe.  

Not that we didn't already know most of this, but isn't it interesting how it's all playing out.  Maybe the aspens truly are "turning":

Kenneth L. Wainstein, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters after the plea that the growth of MZM appeared to be "an American success story." Instead, it was built "by spreading corruption within the congressional appropriations process, the defense contracting apparatus and the financing of congressional campaigns," he said.

Wade went beyond bribing Cunningham, Wainstein added, to include the Defense Department officials who would be making the procurement decisions that affected District-based MZM. This included hiring the son of one official who oversaw the company's work and then hiring the official, too, according to the plea agreement. In return, Defense officials gave Wade's company inside budget information and favorable performance reviews, court documents said.

Wade also pleaded guilty to election law fraud for making nearly $80,000 in illegal campaign contributions to "Representatives A and B," who are identifiable as Goode and Harris. He did so, the filings said, in hopes that they, like Cunningham, would "earmark" federal money for MZM. Wade gave the funds for the donations to 19 of his employees and their spouses, who then wrote $2,000 checks to the members, according to the documents.

The 2006 election campaign is well underway, with a script virtually constructing itself.

New York, NY (Rotters) - Ever since being fingered by George W. Bush as the favored presidential election opponent for the Republican Party in 2008, Senator Clinton has been met with a withering disinformation campaign from the bowels of what some describe as the vast right-wing conspiracy. At issue most recently was a very unflattering and supposedly candid snapshot of the New York senator greeting people upon her arrival for President Bush's State of the Union address to Congress.

The photo has been circulated throughout the United States and indeed the world, and is currently on Yahoo's list of most e-mailed photographs.

Remember Senator Orrin Hatch's great performance during the Clarence Thomas confirmation proceedings?  

In between pouting and childish tantrums he managed, with help from Arlen Spector, to trash Anita Hill when it was later confirmed by David Brock, who was helping lead the smear brigade and later turned on the radical right, that the law professor was telling the truth.

It was Hatch who hatched a booby hatch theory that Hill's testimony describing devout rightist Thomas's penchant for pornography stemmed from plagiarizing the famous seventies' book and later film, The Exorcist.  Hatch ultimately got his wish to have Thomas confirmed, where he has become a reliable rubber stamp marching to the tune of the patriarch of judicial reaction, Antonin Scalia.

Cross Hatch's path by daring to take an opposing view and he is quick to label you a "propagandist", a classic case of being called ugly by a frog.  He is currently singing his familiar tune again pertaining to Samuel Alito, Jr.  

"Under any reasonable, objective or traditional standard, the Senate would overwhelmingly confirm this exceptional nominee," the Utah solon declared in his traditional holier than thou fashion.