AlterNet
October Surprise: Goverment Computers To Go Offline During Voter Registration Peak
By Wendy Weiser, Brennan Center for Justice
Posted on September 25, 2008, Printed on September 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/100392/

A recent alert by the Social Security Administration announces that the agency plans to shut down its databases for maintenance from October 11 through October 13. While this might not sound like an election issue, it turns out that this could significantly impede registration of first-time voters as well as the re-registration of eligible citizens.

Here's why. A 2002 federal law, the Help America Vote Act, requires all states to "coordinate" their voter registration databases with the Social Security database (and state motor vehicle databases) for the purpose of processing new voter registration forms. For the millions of voters who do not have current driver's licenses and register using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, state election officials are required to try to match their voter registration information against Social Security records. But if the Social Security database is down—as it will be for four days—they won't be able to do that. Across the country, the processing of these voter registration forms will grind to a halt for four days.

By STEPHEN LENDMAN
June 11, 2008

Part of her job involved intelligence gathering on Iraq and Afghanistan - until August 2004 when she refused to spread propaganda about a non-existant Iranian nuclear weapons program and left. She followed in the footsteps of others at CIA who resigned for reasons of conscience and became critics - most notably Ray McGovern, Ralph McGehee, and Phil Agee.

On May 16, 2008, Arrigo sent extensive government corruption and cover-up information to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee - in 12 separate cases. This article covers four of them or about one-third of what Congress got. The 12 are explosive and revealing but just the tip of the iceberg:

-- of government corruption and war profiteering;

-- sweetheart deals and kickbacks;

-- high-level types on the take;

-- trillions of missing dollars;

-- on September 10, 2001, Rumsfeld admitting "According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions;"

-- imagine the current amount;

-- its corrosive effect on the nation; and people should

Another Day in the Empire

Friday November 10th 2006, 6:13 pm

###

John Conyers, Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, didn’t mean it.

“The incoming speaker has said that impeachment is off the table. I am in total agreement with her on this issue: Impeachment is off the table,” Conyers declared after the Democrats stormed the House and Senate.

But wait a minute.

Didn’t Conyers seek to create a select committee to investigate Bush crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment?

Last December, Conyers, along with Senator Barbara Boxer and Congressmen John Lewis, said Bush committed impeachable offenses by illegally ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop inside the country without a court warrant. Conyers introduced measures to censure Bush and Cheney, not for the NSA snoop case but for telling lies and fabricating scary campfire stories resulting in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He released The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Cover-ups in the Iraq War.