...this "controversy" makes me mad and I am going to tell the world why. Some well known members over at Free Republic actually did hasten the death of someone dear to me and who was dear to many people all over the nation.
Andy Stephenson, was a man with a mission. He had discovered the flaws in touch screen voting WAY before anyone else was talking about it. He tried to raise the alarm and went all over the country telling people what he had found.
More over the hill ...
Andy believed with all his heart that the very foundation of our precious right to vote was being destroyed, so he began to work hard on discovering a way to stop it. He even ran for Secretary of State in Washington state because after seeing what happened in Florida, he saw the local shenanigans already being staged with the acquisition and programming of these machines, and wanted to raise the conscience of all people as to what was happening. Andy was the one who discovered the georgia_fix "patch" that was going to be used in Georgia's touch screen software that they stupidly left on an unsecured state FTP site anyone could access ~ and Andy found it. Incidentally Max Cleland lost that race and nobody knows to this day who really won because their machines "lost" data and were so flawed.
Andy also was a frequent visitor over at Democratic Underground where he wrote as well as spoke about touch screen voting and what he had found while traveling around the country. I was at his funeral and and everyone laughed through their tears as his niece remembered Andy gathering his loved ones together and telling them how much he loved them all and thanked them for all they had given to him in his life. His niece related how, at the end of his speech, while everyone was struggling with their emotions, Andy brought down the house with gales of laughter when he added, "And after I go, remember ~ always ask for paper ballots!"
In the midst of his fervent work, Andy had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Andy also did not have any health care insurance and was looking death in the face. Without his request, people all over the country began to fund raise because his only hope was an operation that requested $12,000.00 up front.
This is when the story takes a very dark turn, thanks to Free Republic members.
While people were raising funds to get that operation for Andy, some bloggers over at Free Republic began to scream that Andy was not really sick, that he was just "looking for attention ..." When they found out about the fund raising being done in order to fly Andy to the East Coast and pay for the operation, some of them said the fund raising was fraudulent. With the applause of Free Republic, some of their members went to court, filing papers against Andy and the people raising money, seeking an injunction to halt the fund raising.
Anyone aware of how rapid pancreatic cancer can take someone will know what that did to the need for immediate and aggressive treatment ~ and, unless they are more idiotic than I have witnessed, the delay was also doing damage that those Free Republic people also knew well. Every minute was precious to us all as we watched Andy suffer through the ridiculous allegations and court hearings. Finally the courts saw what was the truth and Andy was allowed to use the funding for what it was intended and the funding was allowed to continue.
But it was too late. Andy died, leaving thousands of people like me to mourn his absence, not only for the single handed work he had done that few others were doing, not only for his courage to speak up when so many people believed he was a kook when he was not, but because Andy was just a plain joy to be around, he was funny, alert, and one of the most alive people anyone would meet. I am also posting the link to the Kos diary I wrote the day of Andy's funeral here: http://www.dailykos.com/...
So Bill-o, WSJ, and whomever else who insists on calling Kos names, why are you not talking about the REAL people who had little compunction, even being willing to hasten a fellow American patriot's death, why aren't you calling out the people who have actually been cannibals? You point the finger at people who are out there trying to do something about democracy's imminent demise instead of showing actual examples of ones who have been cannibals, like Free Republic members who sabotaged every attempt at trying to repair it! You need to remember, what your mother told you: When you point your finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you!
Cat In seattle