[The Mainstrem Media would have you believe Monica Goodling's Testimony
was a Snooze-fest, given the trival, dismissive coverage it recieved.
However, besides implicating Gonzales in Perjury of Congress
and with Witness Tampering, this naive and innocent insider at DOJ,
may have exposed a "loose thread" that could ultimately lead to
the "Great Unraveling" of that cozy sweater, which Gonzales,
Rove, Miers, and others, have quietly woven around the Dept of Justice.
All it should take, is for a few daring souls to start pulling
at "the thread". Here's are Monica's overlooked, off-handed comments: ]
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Goodling Testifies Before The House Judiciary Committee
CQ Transcripts Wire
May 23, 2007
Questioning by Congresswoman, Subcommittee Chair
Linda Sanchez, (D-CA):
SANCHEZ: Can you explain what cadging is?
I'm not familiar with that term.
GOODLING: You know, my understanding -- and
I don't actually know a lot about it --
is that it's a direct-mail term
that people who do direct mail,
when they separate addresses that may be good
versus addresses that may be bad.
That's about the best information that I have,
is that it's a direct-mail term
that's used by vendors in that circumstance.
But in any case, I knew that that was an issue
that might arise. Because there had been stories about it...
SANCHEZ: That Tim Griffin was involved in that
to some degree, or may have been involved.
GOODLING: Right. Right.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
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[In December 2006, Tim Griffin was named U.S. Attorney
for the Eastern District of Arkansas (without Senate Confirmation).
Griffin replaced US Attorney of H.E. "Bud" Cummins,
who is one of the 8 US Attorneys, who were recently replaced
for questionable reasons, under the direction of Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General.]
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ThinkProgress.org
May 25, 2007
Post Reporter: 'So What Is This Caging Thing?'
The allegations against Griffin are serious.
... Bush administration was worried about the allegations
and decided not to proceed with the Griffin nomination
before the Senate because it would draw attention
to this very topic.
In 2004, BBC reporter Greg Palast obtained two e-mails --
prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida ...
Greg Palast explains:
Here's how the scheme worked:
The RNC mailed these voters letters
in envelopes marked, "Do not forward",
to be returned to the sender.
These letters were mailed to servicemen
and women, some stationed overseas,
to their US home addresses.
The letters then returned to
the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable."
The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters
were transmitted from state headquarters,
in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington.
The party could then challenge the voters'
registration and thereby prevent their
absentee ballots being counted.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
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[So that's 'caging' -- But WHO is Greg Palast?
and what makes him such an expert?
He is an Author and investigative Reporter, who's not afraid
of "hard work" or of "going against the MSM grain".
Greg Palast is a respected Journalist in the U.K.
where a few Media outlets still exist, that actually value
his "Fact-based investigative reporting".
Here's his story, in his own words:
(Key points of the interview are noted here,
-- for the sake brevity, but the entire interview is noteworthy) ]
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Greg Palast, Author of Armed Madhouse,
on How Rove May Have Already Stolen the 2008 Election
Submitted by BuzzFlash on 05/17/2007
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
GREG PALAST: ... the reason my book was subpoenaed
is that it has to do with the US prosecutor firings.
The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections --
not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote.
...
In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed
a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes
of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers. Nice guy.
They actually challenged the votes and successfully removed
tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls,
same as they did in 2000.
But instead of calling them felons,
they said that they had suspect addresses.
BuzzFlash: In which election cycle?
GREG PALAST: 2004. And in 2006 and 2004,
they challenged tens of thousands of black soldiers.
They stopped their votes from being counted
when they were mailed in from Baghdad.
Go to Baghdad and lose your vote -- mission accomplished.
BUZZFLASH: How did they do that?
GREG PALAST: By sending letters to the homes of soldiers,
marked "do not forward." When they came back undelivered,
they said: Aha! Illegal voter registered from a false address.
And when their ballot came in from Fallujah, it was challenged.
The soldier didn't know it. Their vote was lost.
Over half a million votes were challenged and lost by the Republicans -- absentee ballots.
Three million voters who went to the polls found themselves
challenged by the Republicans.
This was not a small operation.
It was a multi-million dollar, wholesale theft operation.
...
BUZZFLASH: ...in Chicago, you did a presentation that shows
the list that was used to disenfranchise voters.
GREG PALAST: Those are the purge lists.
For 2004, we have the caging lists.
And in 2008, we're going to have what's called
the verification list.
BUZZFLASH: Meaning the return of the Jim Crow laws, I assume?
GREG PALAST: When I say the 2008 race has already been stolen,
about a million and a half voter registrations have been turned down.
Even though there have been massive voter registration drives
among Hispanics and African Americans, as the churches
fill up the bucket, there's a hole in the bucket
where the registrations are being dumped.
GREG PALAST: We've got the documents. We ain't guessing.
When I say they had caging lists targeting innocent black soldiers,
I have the lists. I have the soldiers' names.
We spoke to their families.
In fact, interestingly, "60 Minutes" came into our office
and said, "My God, to prove what these caging lists are,
you're going to have to make hundreds of calls and
spend hundreds of hours going through this stuff."
And we said, "Yeah, it's reporting. Try it. It won't hurt you."
...
GREG PALAST: The Republicans proved their point.
They can break the law. They can put a criminal in as U.S. prosecutor.
They can break every rule of the Senate by going around
-- remember, it's not just senatorial privilege, it's called voter privilege.
The people of Arkansas elected Senator Pryor.
One of the things that they elected him to do is
approve the U.S. attorney for his area.
We call that democracy.
...
BUZZFLASH: Now we've got Griffin, specialist in
violating the Voting Rights Act.
In Arkansas, we have other people who were appointed
who are willing to go on with the scheme to suppress the vote
and then have states pass Jim Crow-type laws and Republican legislators.
There probably are other prosecutors who weren't replaced
who are willing to go along with this scheme in key states.
Otherwise, they would have been replaced.
There also have been bogus claims of violation of registration
of voters on Native American reservations.
...
GREG PALAST: ... Bobby Kennedy says that what we have here
is a criminal conspiracy to commit felony manipulation
of the voter system. It violates endless numbers of laws.
These people really need to be not in office, but in prison.
He’s not a guy given to much excitement, but when he looked at
the evidence in Armed Madhouse, he just flipped.
And what’s driving him crazy as well is that Karl Rove is right.
The U.S. media is not picking up the investigation.
http://www.buzzflash.com/...
----
OpEdNews.com
Greg Palast, Acclaimed Investigative Journalist on Wednesday's Voice of the Voters
May 22, 2007
GREG PALAST:
"It's not the computer voting machines.
Yes, they're evil. They are wrong, they are manipulative,
they are hack-prone, and they stole the election through computers
in Sarasota and elsewhere in the last election. ...
So, yes, they are a problem. But if you think that's it, baby,
they've got you."
-------------------------------------------------------
Greg Palast Bio:
When Greg Palast, an investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering,
turned his skills to journalism he was quickly recognized
as "the most important investigative reporter of our time"
(Tribune Magazine) in Britain, where his first reports
appeared on BBC Television and in the Guardian newspapers.
Author of two New York Times bestsellers,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse,
Palast is best known in his native USA as the journalist who,
for the UK's Observer, first broke the story of
how Governor Jeb Bush had thousands of black Florida citizens
purged from voter rolls before the 2000 election,
thereby handing the White House to his brother George W.
His reports on the theft of election 2004,
the spiking of the FBI investigations of the bin Ladens
before September 11, and the secret State Department documents
planning the seizure of Iraq's oil fields
have won him a record seven "Project Censored" awards
for reporting news the American media refuses to cover.
-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.opednews.com/...
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[ The MSM Media Machine is NOT pulling at this thread called "caging' --
SO why should you?
Afterall the Media is NOT reporting New Orleans Recovery either --
or the appalling lack modern refinery capacity,
or the outrageous Oil company profits either --
and that's all because of WHY?
-- because "the Media cares about getting to the truth?"
or because they care about protecting the Constitution and Democracy?
Hardly! Most of the Corporate Media cares about only one thing
-- maintaining the "status quo" -- which only has room for Profit-driven "News" --
usually "spun together" at the expense of finding out the true facts!
(just ask Dan Rather)
If we, the public, want the real facts, well then,
I guess we will have to "unravel those threads", ourselves.
"Public Service" is no longer a pre-condition for the Media
to continue its consolidation of Revenue-generating power,
and to keep setting that messaging agenda for the entire country,
be it subject to fact filtering and ownership spin, or not.
"Hey, If they don't report it -- then it must NOT have happened!"
Yeah right! Have I got a "swift boat" commercial I'd like to sell you!]
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