What voter fraud? Oh, THAT voter fraud! Robert Wexler of Palm Beach and suburban Maryland was the trailblazer! Maryland Democrat withdraws from MD-1 race after allegations she voted in 2 states -the other being -wait for it- Florida, are confirmed; What voter fraud? Joe Gibbons!

When I first heard about this story on Tuesday morning after reading the latest on the Orioles amazing winning ways in the Baltimore Sun's sports section -only ten times better than the Miami Herald's and or Sun-Sentinel's combined- I must admit that the political romantic in me hoped that the woman caught up in a political ethical scandal before she could even be elected to Congress, Wendy Rosen, was from either Broward County or Miami-Dade, so there'd be yet another South Florida angle to a political scandal, but sadly, she's from mundane St. Pete, the land of the equivocating (Charlie) Crists.

When she isn't from Maryland... 
But she's described by Politico as being a "Miami native," so we have that at least.

The day after Rosen dropped-out of the race, a newspaper story appeared that recounted how her opponent, Republican incumbent Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist, was involved in a life-saving rescue involving a small child on the road he was traveling on while campaigning.

Can you imagine? 

You don't have to be a political genius to know that the odds of a write-in candidate -John LaFerla- trying to fill the void of a major party candidate who drops-out and successfully map a battle plan that knocks-off a popular incumbent, with only nine weeks to go, has enough problems on their hands before a newspaper in the CD runs a headline that reads, essentially, "Incumbent saves boy's life."

But political reality is stranger than fiction.

Even in places not named Florida.

The Baltimore Sun

Democrat withdraws from 1st District congressional race after allegations she voted in two states

Rosen says she registered in Fla. to support friend there

By Matthew Hay Brown, The Baltimore Sun

9:50 a.m. EDT, September 11, 2012

Wendy Rosen, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1st Congressional District, withdrew from the race Monday amid allegations that she voted in elections in both Maryland and Florida in 2006 and 2008.

It was unclear, however, whether she could remove her name from the ballot with the election less than two months away. Under state law, a candidate has until 70 days before an election to remove his or her name from the ballot. The deadline for the Nov. 6 election passed on Aug. 28.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-wendy-rosen-withdraws-20120910,0,3764352.story

Harris saves boy's life along U.S. Route 50 

September 12, 2012 5:30 am 

Updated: 6:27 pm, Tue Sep 11, 2012.

http://www.myeasternshoremd.com/news/caroline_county/article_480efa72-fc5c-11e1-a8f8-0019bb2963f4.html

-----

Wendy Rosen campaign website: http://www.wendyrosen.com/

Andy Harris congressional website: http://harris.house.gov/

Validated! Contrary to MSM's contention that they DIDN'T exist, therefore common sense voter ID laws were unnecessary, State of Florida flags THOUSANDS of potential illegal voters. Perhaps illegal voters can decide swing state's election so FL can get its 15 Minutes yet again!

newsserviceflorida video: Florida Dept. of State Elections Division spokesman Chris Cate discusses the news of thousands of Illegal voters being on county voting rolls throughout Florida, many of whom have been there for decades. May 9, 2012.
http://youtu.be/uQLlY9VNRKg


Hmm-m... so if I've got this right, the very same people whom we were assured for years by numerous political parties, ethnicity-based organizations, civil rights groups and the American Mainstream Media didn't really exist -they were just hurtful figments of our collective imagination- have not only been proven to really exist, but exist in numbers far larger than we ever thought, and have, in some cases, perhaps been voting illegally for decades?
Further, that the county in Florida with the highest concentration of those very special illegal voters is, in fact, Miami-Dade County?
Yes.


So it looks like the "experts" were wrong on everything, no?


Including Herald columnists like Leonard Pitts, Jr., who in this January 10th 2012 column, 
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/10/135215/commentary-voter-id-laws-and-life.html
in order to make his absurd leap in logic, has to imagine the problem of someone with no car and no bank account and no... anything.
Yes, they're as helpless as a baby!


Honestly, does Pitts really STILL think that in the year 2012, state and county governments in this country haven't already issued millions of photo ID cards to people on govt. assistance in order to cut down on fraud against taxpayers and facilitate access to cash instead of having to wait for monthly checks sent by mail?
That's been going on for well over 20 years...
Yes, Leonard Pitts, Jr. really is that out of touch!


In his mind, it's still 1966, so he has to pretend that he doesn't know anything about these common knowledge facts regarding the advent of technology, otherwise his ridiculous ideological argument falls flatter than usual.
Kansas flat!


The usual techniques employed in a Pitts column are willful and intentional ignorance about commonly known facts and imagining the worst possible scenario and then setting that bogus reality up as both normal and everywhere. 
And that person needs the help of a caring, sharing federal government that will look after them.


That's why Pitts is the Herald's resident go-to pro-Big Government columnist, and is consistent in this mantra every month of the year from his home outside of Florida.


(The columns he writes for the Herald that intentional don't have geographical datelines unless he's out of the country, so that way, you don't think about the fact that he doesn't really live in Florida, and the newspaper can continue the illusion that he has something worth reading, a foolish facade most people are hip to.)


So, speaking of phonies, when are we going to hear the logical explanation from the folks at La Raza about where all these thousands of people magically came from, after all, and how THEY could have been so wrong? 
I wan to make sure that I don't miss THAT televised press conference!


Special Note to Mainstream Media: Please don't embarrass yourselves in the future AGAIN by using those same self-interested and condescending groups, with their smug and accusatory spokes-models as "experts" on voting rights, ethnic voting turnout and civil rights, who accused anyone and everyone opposed to any reasonable common sense use of photo IDs as racists.




Ironically, you often need to show a photo ID to get into many office buildings where newspapers or TV stations have offices or bureaus, but the same newspaper's Editorial Boards were often AGAINST voter ID laws that required you to use a photo ID to prove who you were to vote.
But you do need to show one in order to get inside the building and place a newspaper classified ad!

Oh, that's right, nobody does that anymore.


And as it happens, I also don't much want to hear excuses from govt. employees working in County Election Offices who basically gave those groups cover, either, who now say, contrary to before, that nobody expects the rolls to be entirely accurate.
Uh, actually, we do.
Those people are finito, and persona non grata. 



One more reminder: Voters facing expulsion from voter rolls can ask for a hearing to dispute the finding. 
But those requests are, themselves, public records, so those of you interested in knowing whether there are any "illegal" voters in your city can ask for the list thru a public records request of your county election board if you were so inclined.
After all, how do you think the news media knew whom to contact and use as examples in this article in order to make it more sympathetic -really, using a sickly old woman?- instead of a sign of something insidious, or just further proof of more general govt. incompetency in Florida?


-----
Miami Herald

VOTING
Florida finds nearly 2,700 non-U.S. citizens on voting rolls  
The state has found thousands of potential non-U.S. citizens on voting rolls and an analysis indicates a third could have voted in previous elections. But some of the voters say they’re lawful citizens who legally cast ballots
By Marc Caputo and Steve Bousquet
May 9, 2012


Nearly 2,700 potential non-U.S. citizens are registered to vote in Florida and some could have been unlawfully casting ballots for years, according to a Miami Herald-CBS4 analysis of elections data.


The bulk of the potential non-citizen voters are in Florida’s largest county, Miami-Dade, where the elections supervisor is combing through a list of nearly 2,000 names and contacting them.


An analysis of a partial list of 350 names in Miami-Dade showed that about 104 have cast ballots going as far back as 1996.


Even if voters are on the list, it doesn’t mean they’re not eligible to cast a ballot.


Consider the case of Miami’s Maria Ginorio, a 64-year-old from Cuba, who said she became a U.S. citizen in August 2009. She said she was angered by a letter she received asking her to go to the elections office to document her status. Ginorio, who said she typically votes by absentee ballot, is ill and homebound.


"I’m not going to do anything about this,’’ Ginorio said. "I can’t. I guess I won’t vote anymore. I say this with pain in my heart, because voting is my right as a citizen.’’


Citizens like Ginorio were flagged as potentially ineligible after the state’s Division of Elections compared its database with a database maintained by Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which records whether a newly licensed driver is a U.S. citizen.


As a result, some citizens could appear to be non citizens now because the DHSMV computer system doesn’t automatically update when someone becomes a citizen, said Chris Cate, a spokesman with the Florida Division of Elections.


“We’re not just looking at the matches from Highway Safety,” Cate said. “We’re doing a secondary assessment here before we send the names to supervisors of elections. You have to consider that a person’s last contact with highway safety can be more than four years ago. Someone could have become a citizen in that time. So you can’t presume someone’s not an eligible voter.”


Cate said it’s not surprising that the bulk of potential non-citizen voters are in Miami-Dade. With 1.2 million active registered voters, it’s Florida’s most-populous county and it has the largest immigrant population in the state. Broward County has about 260 potential non-citizen voters on the rolls.


Christina White, a deputy Miami-Dade elections supervisor, said the county is sending out letters to all potential non voters within 30 days and is asking them to prove citizenship.


The state’s effort to clean the voter rolls are unfolding in a presidential election year in which perceptions of voting problems and potential fraud break down along partisan lines — especially after the Republican-led Legislature last year cracked down on voting registration groups and early voting on the Sunday before Election Day.


Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, sponsored the election law and said he feels “validated” by the state’s actions in keeping its voter rolls clean.


“We need to protect the integrity of the system and ensure that people who aren’t eligible to vote aren’t casting ballots,” Baxley said. “The elections supervisors are going to send any names they find suspicious to the state attorneys, but the prosecutors have bigger fish to fry than this. So the only way to deal with this problem is preventative.”


But University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith, a critics of Baxley’s law, said the state purges could block eligible voters from casting ballots, thereby making the cure worse than the problem.


Smith noted that 3,000 potential non-citizen voters is a small number compared to the state’s 12 million total voters.


“This attests to the fact that there’s very little voter-registration fraud,” Smith said. “This purging can be a real problem.”


To be eligible to cast a ballot in Florida, a voter must be a state resident and a U.S. citizen with no felony record. Those who have been convicted of felonies can cast ballots if their rights have been restored by the state. It’s a third-degree felony to commit voter fraud in Florida.


Neither the state nor the county’s election office would release all of the suspected names, in part because the list contains personal data such as Social Security and driver-license numbers that are not public record.


Of the partial Miami-Dade list given to the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times and CBS 4, less than a third of the potential non citizens had voted, going as far back as 1996. About 39 of them are Democrats, 39 Republicans and 26 are independents or third-party voters.


About 13 of the voters cast ballots in the disputed 2000 presidential election, which was decided by 537 votes.


The state began unearthing potential non-citizen voters when the highway safety agency began coordinating with the elections division.


The post-9/11 federal REAL ID Law, which took effect in Florida in 2010, requires proof of U.S. Citizenship to obtain or renew a driver’s license. At first, the state unearthed 1,251 voters. The number now stands at 2,676. The list is expected to grow.


"Someone’s ability to vote is sacrosanct," said Julie Jones, executive director of the highway safety agency. "We’re all working together to make sure the process is valid, but our information is only as good as the last time somebody visited our office."


Jones said that because a driver’s license in Florida is valid for eight years, a non-citizen could have gotten a license prior to 2010 and subsequently become a citizen, but her agency would have no way of knowing.


Others are in Florida on work visas or student visas, Jones said. They can get temporary driver’s licenses in Florida but they can’t vote.


"I don’t think we’ll ever have a completely error-proof database," said Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark. "There are just so many variables."


Pinellas got a list of 36 names a couple of weeks ago. So far, Clark said, two people have provided proof of citizenship, two more say they will provide proof and one person was removed from the rolls for confirming their status as a non-citizen. Thirty one others have not yet been reached.


Anyone whose citizenship is questioned has at least 30 days to provide proof under state law.


"We don’t just take them off the rolls," Clark said. "We send them a certified letter and ask for proof of citizenship."


Pasco County received 13 names. Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley said the first two names he checked were able to prove their citizenship. They live in Ohio and Massachusetts, but vote in Florida..


"I’m just concerned about the end result," Corley said. "I don’t want to be kicking people off the rolls who are citizens."


The whole process spooks voters like Aventura’s Maria Bustamente, 63. She sounded alarmed at having her name appear in a list of potential non-citizens — but noted that while she has an ID card, she does not have a driver’s license.


“Yes,” she said with surprise, “I’m an American citizen.”


Miami Herald reporters Patricia Mazzei and Andres Viglucci contributed to this report.

Pow! Former Dem. congressman Artur Davis of Alabama slices-and-dices, marinates and sautés the N.Y. Times' Andy Rosenthal in the National Review Online. Delicious!

Pow! Former Dem. congressman Artur Davis of Alabama slices-and-dices, marinates and sautés the N.Y. Times' Andy Rosenthal in the National Review Online. Delicious!

But first, the necessary predicate, which I sent some of you the day it appeared in The Post:


The Washington Post
The Fix blog
Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis talks party-switching
Posted by Aaron Blake at 03:18 PM ET, 12/30/2011

Former Democratic congressman Artur Davis, who has been a thorn in the side of Democrats in the aftermath of his loss in the 2010 Alabama gubernatorial primary, is a man without a political party.

In an interview with The Fix, Davis openly speculated about running for office as an independent or even a Republican. In both cases, he suggested his decision not to make the switch has as much to do with the difficulties involved as any desire he has to remain a Democrat.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/former-democratic-rep-artur-davis-talks-party-switching/2011/12/30/gIQAmOKyQP_blog.html


Reader comments at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/former-democratic-rep-artur-davis-talks-party-switching/2011/12/30/gIQAmOKyQP_blog.html


NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
Rosenthal’s Amnesia 
The Times columnist forgets how protesters treated LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Bush, . . .
By Artur Davis
January 9, 2012 4:00 A.M.

Lyndon Johnson was loathed enough that, in his final year in office, he dared not make a public appearance other than at a military base; it was commonplace for chanting crowds to gather and spray verbal obscenities at LBJ’s White House. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was a routine subject of cultural derision, some of it viciously aimed at his pre-teen daughter and his brother. Bill Clinton spawned so much hate that at least some of his adversaries spread strange rumors that he was connected to murder; then there was this thing called impeachment. George W. Bush inflamed some of his enemies enough that they carried signs crudely depicting him as a war criminal or a Hitler clone.

I mention all these instances of ugliness directed at presidents because they are apparently unknown to Andrew Rosenthal, a New York Times columnist, who caused a stir last week by implying that strident opposition to Barack Obama is racially motivated, and that it’s all part of a racist tide building in advance of the November elections.

Read the rest of the essay at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/287536/rosenthal-s-amnesia-artur-davis 


In case you forgot who ran that race-based ad campaign against Bobby Jindal in 2003 that's mentioned in the article above, it was Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.


POLITICO
Artur Davis: From Dem star to exile
By: Alex Isenstadt
December 1, 2011 11:37 PM EST

The future once seemed limitless for Artur Davis.

Not so long ago, he was viewed as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars, routinely evoking comparisons to Barack Obama. A smart, ambitious Harvard Law School graduate like Obama, Davis appeared to be on a trajectory to make history as Alabama’s first black governor. Some saw the youthful congressman as a future attorney general.

Today, all that is gone.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/69578.html


Reader comments at:
http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=1&threadid=6210856


Anyone who's well-read, with a lick of common sense and possessed of an open mind, and who has spent any serious amount of time living and working in the Washington, D.C. area, knows almost from osmosis that nobody-but-nobody is EVER more popular with the ranks of the Beltway's permanent Democratic-leaning Mainstream Media than a Republican former insider or power-broker who says positive things about the Democratic Party's policies, or, who attacks another prominent Republican, the better-known the better.


This explains the recent phenomena the past three months of appearances on U.S. network TV and the cablenets by former GOP House members, staffers and party officials from the 1990's, many of whom had completely fallen off the MSM's radar, so long as they have something negative to say about Newt Gingrich, even if they owe their own rise from complete obscurity to prominence to Newt.
(That is, if you believe that nobody from Romney's PAC was involved in any way with coordinating this shopping of these anti-Newt/pro-Republican establishment types to make it easier for the MSM to find them.)


Conversely, nobody is ever treated more like a leper by the MSM than a Democrat who decides -whether out of an overabundance of backbone, bluster, spite or some other reason- to pop-open the hood of the post-Clinton Democratic Party and take a hard look at the role of their pals in the race-identity politics movement and SEIU by performing a LIVE autopsy.
Nobody wants to see under the hood and see the meat being made.

Fox News video: Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields discusses proposed voter ID laws and former AL congressman Artur Davis says via videotape that he believes voter fraud is more present in the absentee ballot process than it is at the actual voting booth, and relates the experience in Alabama. 

http://youtu.be/etSdS1gbQaA