First Door on the Left

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written an amazing article for Rolling Stone…

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America’s voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ”We didn’t have one election for president in 2004,” says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ”We didn’t have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.”

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I’ve become convinced that the president’s party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election.

Click on the headline. Read the entire article.

Update: There are many arguments against Mr. Kennedy’s findings. (James Joyner does an excellent job of compiling them.) This is not surprising. After all, you can hardly expect the Right to accept his findings without argument. To do so would be an admission of their crimes.

Fundraiser Admits Illegal Bush Donations

TOLEDO, May 31 — A coin dealer and prominent GOP fundraiser at the center of an Ohio political scandal pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges that he illegally funneled about $45,000 to President Bush’s reelection campaign.

Tom Noe, who also raised money for Ohio Republicans, also is charged with embezzlement in an ill-fated $50 million coin investment that he managed for the state workers’ compensation fund.

The investment scandal has been a major embarrassment for Ohio’s ruling Republicans and has given Democrats a better shot at winning state offices this year, including the governor’s office, which has been under GOP control since 1991.

Investigators do not know whether Noe used money from the coin fund for campaign donations.

Noe was charged with exceeding federal campaign contribution limits, using others to make the contributions and causing the Bush campaign to submit a false campaign-finance statement.

He said that he pleaded guilty to “spare my family and many dear friends” the ordeal of a trial.

Noe, 51, has been free on bond since he was indicted in October, and he is living in Florida. Prosecutors planned to recommend a sentence of two to 2 1/2 years. The maximum sentence would be five years on each of three counts and a combined $950,000 in fines. A sentencing date was not set.

Bush-Noe

George W. Bush and Tom Noe

I watched a film on my local PBS channel the other night entitled “Two Days in October.” If you haven’t seen it, you should. It really drove home the point that, as silly as this may sound, history is written by those who write it.

I’d always heard that history is written by the victors. For example, how different would the history of World War II be if the Germans had written it, or the Revolutionary War if the British had written it? I doubt those histories would bear much resemblance to the histories taught in our schools today.

Tim Blair has written a bit of history. He calls it “Dubya, dubya, dubya dotcon.” He thinks it’s the official crazy-lefty presidential chronology, in which all assertions are false.

But is it?

I think that Mr. Blair, unbeknownst even to himself, may have gotten a headstart on a bit of history. It all depends on who the final victors are, who gets to write history. That is yet to be determined.