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Does this happen in a democracy? 
US journalist punched, arrested by officer outside Florida voting office
A sheriff's deputy tackled, punched and arrested a US journalist for taking pictures of people waiting in line to cast early ballots in West Palm Beach, local media reported.
A sheriff's spokesman said later the deputy was enforcing a new county rule prohibiting reporters from interviewing or photographing voters lined up outside the polls, the Palm Beach Post said.
The deputy Sunday tried to grab the camera of James Henry, a freelance journalist who has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Henry, 54, ran across the pavement but was tackled by the deputy, who pinned him to the ground, punched him in the back and handcuffed him, according to the daily.
He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Teresa LePore did not comment on the incident or the new rule, which had not been previously announced. LePore gained notoriety as the creator of the infamous butterfly ballot that confused thousands of voters in the chaotic and controversial 2000 election.
Her counterpart from Leon County, Ion Sancho, expressed outrage at the attempt to restrict reporters and photographers outside polling places, saying it was a constitutional right, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Le Pore's office had not announced the new rule before the incident. [more]
Excellent
Michael Moore's video cameras poised to focus on dirty tricks: Movie maker declares war on intimidation by Oliver Burkeman
The filmmaker Michael Moore has announced a large-scale effort to combat dirty tricks during tomorrow's US election by stationing hundreds of people with video cameras outside polling stations.
"I'm putting those who intend to suppress the vote on notice: voter intimidation and suppression will not be tolerated," Mr Moore said in a statement, wading into a controversy in which Democrats accuse Republicans of planning to reduce turnout, especially among ethnic minorities, by employing thousands of people to stop voters at the polls and challenge the validity of their registrations.
Mr Moore, the director of the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, said 1,200 professional and amateur videographers would descend on polling stations in Florida and Ohio, the two battleground states that have been the focus of the most serious allegations. The last few months have seen an unprecedented drive to register new voters, especially in black neighbourhoods of Florida and throughout Ohio. [more]
Fear of Bush
Even Republicans Fear Bush by John Nichols
The most divisive election campaign in recent American history has not merely split the nation along party lines, it has split the Grand Old Party itself. Unfortunately, most Americans are wholly unaware of the loud dissents against Bush that has begun to be heard in Republican circles.
If the United States had major media that covered politics, as opposed to the political spin generated by the Bush White House and the official campaigns of both the Republican president and his Democratic challenger, one of the most fascinating, and significant, stories of the 2004 election season would be the abandonment of the Bush reelection effort by senior Republicans. But this is a story that, for the most part, has gone untold. Scant attention was paid to the revelation that one Republican member of the U.S. Senate, Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, will refrain from voting for his party's president -- despite the fact that Chafee offered a far more thoughtful critique of George W. Bush's presidency than "Zig-Zag" Zell Miller, the frothing, Democrat-hating Democrat did when he condemned his party's nominee. Beyond the minimal attention to Chafee, most media has neglected the powerful, and often poignant, condemnations of Bush by prominent Republicans. [more]
Who are they?
- Elmer Andersen, former Minnesota Governor
- Ambassador John Eisenhower, son of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Marlow Cook, former U.S. Senator from Kentucky
- Scott McConnell, executive editor, The American Conservative
- William Milliken, former Michigan Governor
- Bob Smith, former U.S. Senator from New Hampshire
- Pete McCloskey, former U.S. Representative from California
- Al Meiklejohn, former State Senator from Colorado
- Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler chairman
- Tim Ashby, served under both former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush
- Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of former Republican National Committee chair Rogers C.B. Morton, Secretary of the Interior under Richard Nixon, Secretary of Commerce under Gerald Ford
- Clay Myers, former Oregon Secretary of State
- William Rutherford, former State Treasurer of Oregon
- John Galbraith, former Ohio State Representative
- Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to the secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration
Former Bush business partner for Kerry
Bush Pal Comer Cottrell Quits GOP by Cheryl Smith
Dallas millionaire and fellow Republican Comer Cottrell, one of President George W. Bush's former business partners, has announced that he is joining the Democratic Party.
Citing his disappointment with the president's politics, Cottrell, who amassed his fortune as the founder of the Pro-Line Corporation specializing in Black hair care products, said the move was something he had been considering for a while.
"This is not a condemnation of a friend," Cottrell explains. "It's a matter of political issues we disagree on."
Cottrell, who shared ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team with a group of businessmen that included Bush, went on to discuss the state of the economy; medical care issues, health insurance concerns and the war in Iraq as areas he and the president were not in agreement about.
"I sent my son to war this week, but not in Iraq. He went to Florida because we have a battleground there," he said, referencing election problems in 2000 and the news that there are still unsolved problems with the process, like the lack of a uniform voting system. [more
Challenge this! Republicans for Kerry
GOP defectors could tip state to Kerry by Michael Moss
With both parties fiercely focused on getting their likely backers out to vote in Iowa on Tuesday, a new poll suggests that President Bush's support in this battleground state waned last week.
The tight race here could slip into legal warfare as soon as 6 a.m. today, when election officials in numerous counties begin unwrapping completed absentee ballots in preparation for counting.
Starting then, Republican leaders said, they will challenge any ballots cast by Democrats who they suspect were ineligible to vote. Democrats say they will be out in force to protect any votes from being unfairly tossed out.
Both camps are staging vast get-out-the-vote drives through phone banks and house calls. But holding the line on defections may prove the bigger challenge.
A survey released Sunday by the Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll showed 6 percent of Republicans said they were voting for Kerry, compared with 2 percent of Democrats voting for Bush. In 2000, when Al Gore won Iowa by about 4,000 votes, the same pollster reported that the two sides were nearly evenly split on lost votes from within their parties.
"It's going to be that kind of defection that will decide the race," said Ann Zelzer, who conducted the Iowa Poll.
Her survey showed that support for Kerry held steady last week at 49 percent among likely voters, while support for Bush dipped to 43 percent from 46 percent. The margin of sampling error is about 3.5 percentage points. [more]
Are you Republican? Do you approve of this?
NAACP, election officials caution voters of bogus letter by Jennifer Holland
Charleston County election officials cautioned South Carolinians on Friday to steer clear of a fake letter that threatens the arrest of voters who have outstanding parking tickets or have failed to pay child support.
"I'm outraged," said Jill Miller, director of the Charleston County Board of Election and Voter Registration. "This is so bogus."
The one-page letter poses as a message from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The Rev. Joe Darby, vice president of the state NAACP chapter, said he received the letter at his home in Charleston. It had Columbia postmark with no return address.
He said the letter was an attempt to scare minorities from voting Tuesday because the author of the message assumes black people are in trouble with the law.
"This is old South Carolina politics," said Darby. "I don't think anybody will fall for this."
Darby said he wants the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate. [more]
The biggest screw-up of Bush's life, and that's saying something
Hell to Pay by Rod Nordland, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Michael Hirsh
(...)
For months the American people have heard, from one side, promises to "stay the course" in Iraq (George W. Bush); and from the other side, equally vague plans for gradual withdrawal (John Kerry). Both plans depend heavily on building significant Iraqi forces to take over security. But the truth is, neither party is fully reckoning with the reality of Iraq‹which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. "Things are getting really bad," a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told NEWSWEEK last week. "The initiative is in [the insurgents'] hands right now. This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired. They see this as weakness."
A year ago the insurgents were relegated to sabotaging power and gas lines hundreds of miles outside Baghdad. Today they are moving into once safe neighborhoods in the heart of the capital, choking off what remains of "normal" Iraqi society like a creeping jungle. And they are increasingly brazen. At one point in Ramadi last week, while U.S. soldiers were negotiating with the mayor (who declared himself governor after the appointed governor fled), two insurgents rode by shooting AK-47s--from bicycles. Now even Baghdad's Green Zone, the four-square-mile U.S. compound cordoned off by blast walls and barbed wire, is under nearly daily assault by gunmen, mortars and even suicide bombers.
(...)
The insurgents clearly have a strategy to isolate the Americans--from their Coalition partners, and also from ordinary Iraqis. They know that both Bush's and Kerry's plans for success depend on putting Iraqi forces in place, and they've stepped up their campaign to sabotage that effort. On Oct. 23, insurgents managed to capture 49 Iraqi soldiers heading home for leave in three buses. The homebound soldiers had just finished their basic training at the U.S.-run center at Kirkush; they were traveling unarmed. The insurgents shot them all dead, execution style. Two days later, 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen were captured, and masked jihadists posted a videotape showing them being executed.
Just as worrisome, the insurgents have managed to infiltrate Iraqi forces, enabling them to gain key intelligence. "The infiltration is all over, from the top to the bottom, from decision making to the lower levels," says the senior Iraqi official. In the Kirkush incident, the insurgents almost certainly had inside information about the departure time and route of the buses. Iraqi Ministry of Defense sources told NEWSWEEK the Iraqi recruits had not been allowed to leave the base with their weapons because American trainers were worried that some of them might defect. "The current circumstances oblige us not to give them their weapons when they're taking vacations, in case they run away with them," said one Iraqi intelligence officer.
(...)
... Even the Bush administration official who evinced confidence about the new Fallujah offensive admitted that the new Iraq under the interim government is "not jelling. How can [ordinary Iraqis] support a government that doesn't really exist in many ways?"
(...)
Washington has declared several times that the insurgency would soon be defeated or at least mostly neutralized. Senior officials made such statements when electricity was restored to its pre-occupation levels in 2003, when Saddam was captured in December, when sovereignty was handed over on June 28. Each time the insurgency has only grown. Now even military officials who are hopeful the insurgency can be defeated--or perhaps just reduced to a violent annoyance‹say it will be a long haul no matter who is U.S. president. (emphasis added) [more]
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