January 1, 2005
Viktor Yanukovych vowed to fight on for the Ukrainian presidency despite his resignation as Prime Minister this week, claiming that although he doesn't have much hope of reversing the election, he won't stop trying: Viktor Yanukovych vowed to fight on for Ukraine's presidency, despite handing the opposition of this ex-Soviet Republic a begrudging victory by announcing his resignation as prime minister. ... The pro-Russian Yanukovych announced his resignation as prime minister on Friday in a televised address, his first significant concession since losing Sunday's vote, but said he will maintain his claim to the presidency. "I have made the decision to submit my formal resignation," Yanukovych told the nation. "We are still fighting, but I don't have much hope," he said. "I will act as an independent politician, as the rightful winner of the legitimate Nov. 21 election." Some speculate that the real reason Yanukovych resigned now is to avoid...
The United States has long opposed a second term as IAEA chief for Mohammed ElBaradei. The BBC now reports that the nomination period has completed, and only one candidate qualified for the post. Guess who? The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBaradei has emerged as the only candidate for the post of the agency's next director general. Mr ElBaradei hopes to be re-elected for a third term, but the US does not want his mandate to be renewed. Privately, some US officials have complained that Mr ElBaradei - who has held the post since 1997 - has been too soft on both Iran and Iraq. The IAEA had inspectors in Iraq for years and yet did not ever resolve the issue of WMDs. For instance, Saddam managed to keep hidden all of the core research of his nuclear-weapons program from the IAEA and UN inspectors in the yard...
A Washington judge has denied a woman a divorce from the husband who beat her after she disclosed her pregnancy to the court. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the AP report that Judge Paul Bastine took the unusual step in order to, er, preserve the family unit for the unborn child: A Spokane woman trying to divorce her estranged husband two years after he was jailed for beating her has been told by a judge she can't get out of the marriage while she's pregnant. The case pits a first-year attorney who argues that state law allows any couple to divorce if neither spouse challenges it against a longtime family law judge who asserts that the rights of the unborn child in this type of case trump a woman's right to divorce. "There's a lot of case law that says it is important in this state that children not be illegitamized,"...
Don't forget that the Northern Alliance returns from its Christmas hiatus with a live show today, from noon to 3 pm CT. We plan on talking about the week and the year in review -- and if Nick Coleman doesn't figure in somewhere, pigs will fly over The Patriot today. Be sure to catch us on air or over the Internet, and call in to chat with us at 651-289-4488. If you have a cell phone, you probably have free calling on weekends. We'll look forward to talking with you!...
I normally support efforts to remove tobacco influences from minors, especially as a former smoker myself. However, the lawsuits that plagued the tobacco industry for several years bothered me tremendously, as did the capitulation of the growers to what I felt was legal blackmail. After all, tobacco products have carried warnings about their deadly effects for over four decades -- and anyone foolish enough to start smoking (or not to stop) should be understood to have willing borne the health risks. The settlement proscribed the advertising that tobacco companies could use to promote their products, ostensibly to avoid the aforementioned influence on minors. Again, some of the restrictions made sense. However, the Ohio Supreme Court has managed to push the settlement into another expression of foolishness: Matchbooks given out at bars and stores cannot bear advertising for cigarettes or other tobacco products under the 1998 settlement involving 46 states and...
Over the past three months, all we've heard about elections in Iraq is a steady drumbeat of pessimism -- that the violence of the so-called insurgency will keep Iraqis away from the polls, and even that the Iraqis don't truly want democracy. Despite our men and women in Iraq telling everyone they can that this meme doesn't apply in their experience, the mainstream media in America insists on reinforcing this dreadful analysis with every terrorist bombing, making the Islamist strategy pay off in spades. Tomorrow's Washington Post takes a surprising point of view instead: The number of Iraqis making sure they are properly registered to vote has surged dramatically, officials said Saturday, calling the rise evidence of enthusiasm for the Jan. 30 elections despite continuing security concerns that have blocked the process in two provinces. After a slow start to the six-week registration process that began Nov. 1, the number...
January 2, 2005
In a sign that George Bush had more in mind than just humbling the UN, Reuters analyzes the role India is playing in relief efforts for the massive tsunami damage and how that may transform India-US relations: Within hours of the tsunami, India geared up for its biggest-ever relief operation, but not just with its own devastated coasts in its sights. As New Delhi launched a relief effort along the eastern coast, ten warships -- backed by helicopters and transport aircraft and loaded with relief supplies -- also headed for Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Maldives, three neighbours badly hit in one of world's worst natural disasters. A country campaigning for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, India refused to portray itself as a helpless victim. "India has been trying to convey the image that it is a regional power, and a credible power in terms of having the...
Two articles on the Internet this afternoon show that the Democrats and their candidate still have no clue why they lost the presidential election, even after eight weeks of soul-searching. Adam Nagourney reports on the analyses promulgated by party leaders about their loss and what it means for their future: With exception of a few Democratic outliers in Ohio, few people dispute that the election for president is done and decided: President Bush won and John Kerry lost. But as the new year begins, no such consensus exists among Democrats about why Mr. Kerry was defeated, and the party is locked in a battle of interpretation over just what went wrong. Was it values? Terrorism and Iraq? A better Republican get-out-the-vote operation or a rush of Hispanics to President Bush? A gawky candidate with little to say? Presidential elections often produce a clear story line, a lesson for winners and...
The First Mate and I both are fighting off colds, and so we cut short a shopping day after a few stops to spend the rest of the day in bed. I decided to keep tabs on my two NFL teams, both of which played early games, televised in the Twin Cities. My favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, had little to gain from this road game in Buffalo. Their tremendous rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had been injured in the last game and the Steelers listed him only as the emergency QB for the game. In fact, most of the Steelers sat out this game, allowing the Buffalo Bills to hope that they could squeak into the playoffs against the second- and third-string Pittsburgh lineup they faced. However, even with the replacements, the Steelers dominated the Bills while rolling to a 29-24 win. With future Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis sitting...
Sometimes Western journalists really make us all look so callous that Third World resentment becomes much more understandable. Case in point: London Times columnist Matthew Parris, who asks us to enjoy the tsunami and its aftermath, as natural disasters keep the world from being too boring. No, I'm not kidding: If it were our choice to trigger this seizure, our hand upon the lever of human fortune, would we have pulled the lever? Of course not. So why the thrill? I have hesitated before using that word “thrill”. It is easily misunderstood. It might seem to make light of the blackest few days ever experienced in the lives of millions. But all the reciting in the world of the scale of these miseries, all the acknowledgement we can make of the sympathy which they evoke, cannot hide a small, uncomfortable thought which (I am pretty confident) has occurred to you...
The New York Times reports on what can only be called an intervention for Kofi Annan in a Manhattan apartment that recently took place. Former US diplomat Richard Holbrooke hosted a conference that told an impassive Annan that he needed to clean up his act and that of his staff in order to quit poking the American bear: At the gathering, Secretary General Kofi Annan listened quietly to three and a half hours of bluntly worded counsel from a group united in its personal regard for him and support for the United Nations. The group's concern was that lapses in his leadership during the past two years had eclipsed the accomplishments of his first four-year term in office and were threatening to undermine the two years remaining in his final term. They began by arguing that Mr. Annan had to refresh his top management team, and on Monday he will...
Syria has started an initiative to facilitate voting amongst its Iraqi expatriate community in the upcoming elections, according to the AP: Iraqi expatriates in Syria will have the opportunity to vote in this month's Iraqi elections under an agreement signed Sunday between the Syrian government and the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration. More than 250,000 Iraqis are believed to be living in Syria. Many of them fled here to escape worsening security conditions since the onset of the U.S.-led war that ousted former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last year. The agreement says Iraqis wishing to cast their votes in Syria must prove their eligibility and register at a Damascus election center from Jan. 17 to 23. Polling will take place over three days, from Jan. 28 to 30. Does anyone in the State Department think this is a bad idea? The Iraqis in Syria likely will be the Saddam loyalists...
Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has long been one of my favorite blogs on ... well, a whole range of topics, especially matters of faith. Joe and I started blogging within a couple of weeks of each other and we've occasionally corresponded on our progress in our avocation. Tonight Joe provides his readers with a primer on successful blogging that is much too kind to me: Not being a member of this elite circle of bloggers, I can’t provide advice from my own personal experience. But just as a biographer can glean insights from a study of great presidents, I think a study of the “A”-list can provide a few clues into what makes them successful. After giving the subject a considerable amount of thought and attention, I’ve noticed three specific ways for breaking into the top tier of bloggers: A. Possess the attributes of the top ten bloggers (e.g.,...
January 3, 2005
The New York Times reports today on the sudden distaste for asylum-seekers from North Korea with the Russians, but James Brooke's report talks more about South Korea than the Russian Federation. Defections from Kim Jong-Il's workers paradise has always neen an issue for the Russians (as well as the Chinese), but one that the Russians had tolerated until now. The change appears driven by North Korea and, surprisingly, South Korea as well: In a new twist, diplomats from South Korea now work to discourage defectors from North Korea. Under new rules, South Korea is reducing resettlement payments to North Koreans by two-thirds. Defectors are to be scrupulously investigated. South Korea says that will help weed out criminals, spies and ethnic Koreans from China. Human rights advocates say South Korea's stricter policy is intended to curry favor with China and North Korea, and to slow a rising influx of refugees, which...
US helicopters flew missions into Aceh yesterday, airlifting the badly wounded they found and distributing crucial water and food supplies to the survivors they found in the tsunami-devastated region: U.S. helicopters shuttled the injured and the homeless, many of them children, out of some of the worst-hit parts of tsunami-devastated Aceh province on Monday, as reports surfaced of trafficking in orphans from the disaster. Pilots skimmed low over flattened villages and jungles on the west coast of Sumatra island looking for signs of life, touching down briefly to collect the badly injured and fling out packages of food and water. "They were ecstatic as we flew in. They were blowing us kisses. I think they were really amazed to see us, although some of the children seemed a bit spooked," U.S. Seahawk pilot Lt. Cmdr. Joel Moss told Reuters after his second mission. "Yesterday was the best day of flying...
Drudge links to a Broadcasting & Cable item that reports on a meeting between beleaguered CBS News president Andrew Heyward and the White House. Heyward, rumored to be on the chopping block when the long-awaited internal investigation of the Rathergate fiasco is released, may need a truce with the White House to save his job: Let the fence-mending begin. According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration. ... Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House,” our source says, “and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced.” CBS declined to comment. On its face, Heyward's mission appears doomed....
Mitch at Shot In The Dark drew my attention to a piece by local crank Mark Giselson on his blog that calls into question the Christianity of the Northern Alliance bloggers. (No, I'm not kidding.) He manages to figure out a search engine well enough to find how many times we've all mentioned Jesus on our blogs and from there discerns that we have little faith in our Christianity. Mitch explodes this drivel in great detail. I won't go that far, although anyone who presumes Power Line is some crypto reference to Christianity clearly needs the enema of a really good fisking. (Missing the fact that at least one of the three Power Line bloggers is Jewish also demonstrates Giselson's idiocy.) Here's what Giselson has to say about me: Despite higher hopes for Captain’s Quarters, I got an immediate negatory noise when I searched for Jesus on their front page....
Claude Salhani at the Washington Times presents an analysis of Osama bin Laden's reaction to the two outbreaks of democracy in Southwest Asia this month, and talks about how desperate the terror chief is to stop them: Osama bin Laden, the man who since 9/11 brought fear into the hearts of millions, is now running scared. The master terrorist is afraid; he is very afraid. What frightens bin Laden today are not American B-2 super-stealth bombers capable of dropping tons of high explosives on him from unseen heights, nor the tens of thousands of troops and legions of intelligence officers looking for him since September 2001. He knows how to cope with them. What frightens bin Laden today is the ballot box. The leader of al-Qaida appears particularly concerned over the prospects of pending elections in two Arab countries -- the Palestinian Authority and Iraq -- both scheduled for later...
I'll be on Hugh Hewitt's show at 5:30 PM CT tonight to discuss World Relief Day. Be sure to tune in!...
January 4, 2005
Off to a slow start today, obviously -- fighting a cold and fever. I'll be posting this afternoon as soon as I go through some e-mail. The World Relief Day has skyrocketed, thanks to all of you!...
Al Gore's new TV "network", dubbed INdTV for now, recently sent out a prospectus for potential partners that outlined the type of original programming the former VP plans to air. Richard Leiby reports in today's Washington Post that INdTV hardly appears ready to raise the level of politics in the US: An insider cautioned us yesterday that the e-mail represents just a sliver of the conceptual pie, but the potential must-see lineup includes: • "That's F*&#ed Up: Is there something unfathomable going on around the corner or down the street? Some state of affairs that just doesn't make sense? You can rant all you want -- it just better be good TV." It looks like Gore aims at what he and his backers see as the hip-hop audience, complete with expletives -- even if they don't have the cojones to spell it out. In fact, the rest of the lineup...
In a move that calls into question Hillary Clinton's expected run for the presidency in 2008, Harold Ickes has pulled out of the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee: Former Clinton aide Harold Ickes and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk let top Democrats know Tuesday that they won't be running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. ... Ickes, a longtime Democratic activist, also let party members know he would not be running. "I just decided I probably did not have enough of the attributes (a chairman needs) to do the party justice," Ickes said in an interview. Ickes has strong ties to the Clintons. He served for years as Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff and has been a big money man for both Bill and Hillary. While the DNC chair may have been more high-profile than usual for Ickes' comfort zone, having him ensconced at the...
The uncertainty surrounding the gubernatorial election in Washington continues to grow, as even the Seattle Post-Intelligencer now reports wide discrepancies between ballot counts and voter rolls: Thousands of "mystery voters" in the counties of King, Pierce, Snohomish, Clark and Kitsap appear to be Republican Dino Rossi's best prospect for challenging the legitimacy of the closest and most contentious gubernatorial election in the state's history. The state Republican Party yesterday called on county election officials to explain what the GOP says is a nearly 8,500-vote discrepancy between county vote tallies and the number of people credited with actually voting in the election. Democrats claim that the GOP used preliminary lists and that the discrepancies will narrow once counties update their voter rolls. However, no one now disputes that the election will have little credibility if the margin does not significantly decrease. The difference gives the appearance that several thousand more ballots...
Power goes to a person's head, sometimes more quickly than others. The new sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia seems to be one of the former. Victor Hill celebrated his first day in office by firing 27 people, stationing snipers around the office and driving the fired officers home in prisoner transports: The sheriff, Victor Hill, 39, defended the firings and said he had the right to shake up the department in whatever way he felt necessary. Sheriff Hill also said it was necessary to fire the workers the way he did, including taking some deputies home in vans normally used to transport prisoners because the deputies were barred from using county cars. A Georgia judge disagreed with Sheriff Hill, ordering the 27 officers to be reinstated. Hill tried to use the murder of Derwin Brown in nearby DeKalb County as an excuse to not just fire the 27 officers but...
January 5, 2005
The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof channels his inner Jan Egeland and scolds us for being stingy in our assistance to poorer nations. Using both public and private aid, he lambastes the US as a "Land of Penny Pinchers": The 150,000 or so fatalities from the tsunami are well within the margin of error for estimates of the number of deaths every year from malaria. Probably two million people die annually of malaria, most of them children and most in Africa, or maybe it's three million - we don't even know. But the bottom line is that this month and every month, more people will die of malaria (165,000 or more) and AIDS (240,000) than died in the tsunamis, and almost as many will die because of diarrhea (140,000). And that's where we're stingy. Kristof points out that America spends 15 cents per day per person on official development aid...
North Korea issued civil-defense guidelines to its people in anticipation of attack by the United States, with preparations ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous: North Korea has ordered its people to be ready for a protracted war against the United States, issuing guidelines on evacuating to underground bunkers with weapons, food and portraits of leader Kim Jong Il. ... The manual urged the military to build restaurants, wells, restrooms and air purifiers in underground bunkers where government offices and military units will move in if war breaks out. When North Koreans evacuate to underground facilities, they should make sure that they take the portraits, plaster busts and bronze statues of Kim and his parents so that they can "protect" them in a special room. Kim signed the order himself as the chairman of the Central Military Committee, a position that had not been publicly associated with anyone after the...
The attack on Sinclair Broadcasting by Media Matters for America has claimed its first scalp. Staples, the huge office-supplies retailer, has pulled its advertising for all Sinclair news programming, effective January 10th: Office-supply retailer Staples Inc. is pulling its advertising from news programming on Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. television stations, saying the decision was fueled in part by e-mails from customers angry at what they consider to be the broadcaster's right-wing bias in news and commentary. ... Staples, which has 1,400 stores, will continue to buy advertising during other programs on Sinclair's 62 stations but, as of Jan. 10, no longer will advertise during news programs, which include "The Point," a daily conservative commentary by Sinclair Vice President Mark E. Hyman. MMA claims a "partial" victory, stating that all they want is to raise the issue of fairness in regards to the Sinclair commentary rather than a boycott. However, listing...
Drudge carried a report from the Detroit Free Press that the staff of Rep. John Conyers took turkeys from a Detroit food bank and passed them to their cronies, rather than to the poor people in Conyers' district. The Grinches at Conyers' office has thus far refused to provide an accounting of the food: The director of a Detroit food bank wants to know what happened to 60 turkeys -- 720 pounds of frozen birds -- that his charity gave to members of U.S. Rep. John Conyers' local staff two days before Thanksgiving to give to needy people. Conyers' Detroit office promised an accounting of any turkey distribution by Dec. 27, but the Gleaners Community Food Bank had received no paperwork as of Tuesday, said the charity's director, Agostinho Fernandes. Fernandes said he became suspicious that the turkeys didn't get to poor people after hearing from a friend that a...
The IAEA announced that the UN will inspect an Iranian military site that the US believes was used for nuclear weaponization activities: The inspection will be part of the U.N. investigation into allegations Iran has carried out work linked to nuclear 'weaponization,' the process of testing or assembling a warhead and attaching it to a delivery system. ... According to globalsecurity.org, a Web Site run by a private Washington-based research group, the massive Parchin complex, around 30 km (19 miles) south of Tehran, is the center of Iran's munitions industry. Officials from the United States and several other countries said in September that Parchin may be a site where Iran was testing explosives that would be appropriate for an atom bomb. Although ElBaradei played down the U.S. allegations at the time, agency inspectors asked Tehran to visit the site. They want to take environmental samples to rule out the possibility...
We have been experiencing a number of technical difficulties today with Hosting Matters, which they have diligently worked to correct. If you have had problems loading the page, just keep trying back. The problem affects everything, including the comments programming and my access to the system. Please be patient and keep checking on our status. In the meantime, don't forget to check our progress on World Relief Day! NOTE: Unfortunately, the system ate my gracious and generous post congratulating USC for winning the national championship last night in the Orange Bowl. I know this will disappoint James from Folsom, but I just can't recall what I wrote. Darn. UPDATE 5:45 PM: Still more problems this afternoon. Sorry for the down time; this second outage appears to have affected all Hosting Matters servers....
Human nature dictates a particular need for order in the midst of chaos. It's one of the driving forces behind our capacity to believe in conspiracy theories to explain random, tragic events. That being said, this still surprises me: Just 11 days after Asia's tsunami catastrophe, conspiracy theorists are out in force, accusing governments of a cover-up, blaming the military for testing top-secret eco-weapons or aliens trying to correct the Earth's "wobbly" rotation. In bars and Internet chatrooms around the world questions are being asked, with knowing nods and winks, about who caused the submarine earthquake off Sumatra on December 26, and why governments were so slow to act in the minutes and hours before tsunamis slammed into their shores, killing almost 150,000. "There's a lot more to this. Why is the US sending a warship? Why is a senior commander who was in Iraq going there?" whispered designer Mark...
In a sign that the Democrats are determined to pursue their scorched-earth policy on elections to its bitter conclusion, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has filed an objection to Ohio's presidential electors. John Conyers of Detroit published a report that claims irregularities in Ohio's election accounts for more than the 118,599 votes that George Bush won over John Kerry: The 102-page report titled "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?" lists such problems as unusually long lines, a shortage of voting machines in Democratic-leaning areas, confusion over provisional ballot rules and computer problems. The report also contends there were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation, improper purging of voter registration lists, a lack of inspection for about 93,000 ballots where no vote was cast for president, and vote totals not matching registration numbers or exit poll data. "In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct...
January 6, 2005
Colin Powell announced today that the tsunami relief "core group" of India, Japan, Australia, and the US would disband and fold itself into the UN effort -- now that the world body finally met to organize its relief efforts: "The core group helped to catalyze the international response," Powell told a tsunami relief conference in Jakarta according to a prepared text released by the State Department. "Having served its purpose, it will ... now fold itself into the broader coordination efforts of the United Nations." The analysis by Reuters' Arshad Mohammed credits formation of the group to criticism that George Bush and the US were slow to respond. However, the four nations formed the core group and began distributing aid before the UN even called its meeting to discuss it -- which, coincidentally, occurred today. The UN proved itself to be little more than a lumbering roadblock. Had we waited...
USA Today and the AP have two different analyses of the reception US aid to tsunami victims has received from Muslims in the Middle East. Barbara Slavin and Kathy Kiely take a rosier view of the effect on the Islamic world that our efforts may bring: U.S. relations with Indonesia have been strained in recent years. Though most Indonesians practice a moderate form of Islam, the country is home to a number of extremist groups that have advocated violence against Christians and other non-Muslims. The U.S.-led war in Iraq prompted protests in some Indonesian cities; a group known as the Islamic Defenders Front claimed to have signed up 400 volunteers in "jihad registrations." But in Aceh, the province where Islam first took root in Indonesia and where a less tolerant, more conservative form of the faith is practiced than elsewhere in the country, residents this week were showering praise on...
Barbara Boxer signed onto John Conyers' challenge of the Ohio electors this morning, setting up a useless two-hour debate in both chambers on the election won by George Bush two months ago: Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a challenge signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each. While Bush's victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge will force Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College vote, which is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the second time since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into separate meetings to consider electoral votes. "I have concluded that objecting...
Not according to blogger James Behan, self-proclaimed as the first elected blogger. He predicts a healthy margin of victory for the GOP nominee for Virginia's governor in 2005, and he's picking James Kilgore to be that standardbearer. Behan gives a great look at Virginia state politics. Don't miss it....
Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych keeps swinging and missing on his appeals to overturn the results of the last run-off election. The Ukrainian Supreme Court turned back another challenge by Yanukovych today, one considered an "intermediate" challenge while Ukraine certifies the results of the December 26th balloting: Ukraine's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected losing presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych's appeal of last month's repeat election, bringing the former Soviet republic a step closer to resolving its political crisis. Yanukovych has not exhausted all of his options, however. His campaign has said that his main appeal would be filed with the court only after the Central Election Commission announces the final results of the Dec. 26 vote. Preliminary results of the balloting showed opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko winning by a decisive margin. Yanukovych has only one last at-bat left. Apparently, he's determined to go down swinging -- and go down he will....
Pennywit draws my attention to a comment on an earlier CQ post by Bostonian, which suggests a new way to vote with safeguards built in for each voter to ensure their vote was counted. In addition to making sure that every ballot is legal (for which many proposals have been floated), we need two things: 1) Independent verificiation of the totals 2) Certainty that every vote was counted For 1, when a voter submits his ballot, he provides one copy to a Republican and one copy to a Democrat. There's a unique ballot number on the ballot, which can be used to verify that the identical ballot was included in both totals. Both parties tally up the votes separately, compare the results, and if the error is too large, nail down every last discrepancy. For 2), the voter takes home a paper stub with the same ballot number, and he...
I've been fortunate to have received tremendous support from many friends in the blogosphere for World Relief Day, our January 12 fundraiser for World Vision and tsunami victims in the Indian Ocean region. Hugh Hewitt has put the link at the top of his blog every day, and Kevin McCullough has even created a Blogad for his site, which he's donated to promote the cause. I can't thank both men enough for their friendship and support. Kevin says that other bloggers can add this to their sites as well: I created a powerful blog ad - I had even had my in house test marketers run the phraseology through a demo. It came back with high marks. I have linked to your WORLD VISION PAGE. If people want to place this ad they can copy from my web-site or send me passcodes for free blog ads and I will go...