UPDATE 1*
Just last night:
Karl Rove has threatened a GOP high-tech guru and his wife, if he does not "'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio," according to a letter sent this morning to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, by Ohio election attorney Cliff Arnebeck.
In his email to Mukasey today, Arnebeck writes:
"We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to 'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations."
Now I am sure our fine, honest Attorney General will move with all possible dispatch to protect a potential witness to electoral fraud that changed the outcome of a national election...Doncha Think?
Update 2**
...I would be remiss if I didn't mention that IngeniousGirl prepared a fine diary that went up last night here. I was picking up my kids from school and taking them to Tennis and swimming. I got back and noted some distress in the comments for my not having mentioned this sooner. My apologies.
...Though this covers slightly different ground, it is great that the Election Crimes of Bu$hCo are beginning to be told.
_______________________________________________________________________
...To long-time Kossacks who suspect that the 2004 vote count in Ohio was black-water (Blackwell) rotten, this diary is for you.
...The names Bob Fitrakis and Cliff Arnebeck are nearly synonymous with the battle to see the story of the 2004 General Election in Ohio is dragged kicking and screaming into the light of day.
...Attorney Arnebeck and attorney/investigative journalist Bob Fitrakis, who have participated in both the original '04 election lawsuits and have reported in detail on the related matters continuously since then can be found at the Columbus Free Press.
...Recent developments include a motion to lift a stay in a long-stalled lawsuit in Ohio. (source here BradBlog
Last week Ohio Attorney Cliff Arnebeck held a press conference in Columbus to announce his motion to lift the stay on the long-running King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell lawsuit in which massive improprieties, irregularities and violations of the Voting Rights Act are alleged to have taken place in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.
...in this video these two election rights activists sit with Velvet Revolution and explain how after almost 4 years that the truth about Ohio may just yet come out.
In the wake of the failure by the Buckeye State's Attorney General to properly investigate the allegations, and new evidence and testimony unearthed by Arnebeck and other private investigators, he is now asking that the stay on the lawsuit be lifted by the court in order to refocus the case and depose Karl Rove, and a number of other top GOP operatives believed to be involved in manipulating the results of the '04 election.
...a press conference last week,
featured comments from data security expert Stephen Spoonamore alleging fraud in '04 saying:
"This entire system is being programmed in secret by programmers who have no oversight by anybody,"
...Spoonamore goes on;
You cannot secure electronic voting. You set up a bunch of grandmothers to put together a bunch of computers once every two years, basically those machines are architected in such a manner to maximize their capacity [for] fraud.
...and;
"What happens at the end of the day, all those votes are thrown into a magic box with one troll inside, the troll jumps out and says 'Here are your results! Ta-Da!!' That's it. There's no validation of the code, there's no authentication."
...When asked by a reporter to respond to the fact that both Democratic and Republican Secretaries of State and elected officials will say that our elections are run on a bi-partisan system, Spoonamore responded,
"No it's not. It's not a bi-partisan system. This entire system is being programmed in secret by programmers who have no oversight by anybody. In my opinion, both sides [Democrats and Republicans] have no friggin' clue what they're talking about."
...Arnebeck describes Spoonamore;
[He's] really one of the top, and in fact the top private cop in the world on the subject of data security."
...Karl Rove? Ham-handed prints all over it.
Arnebeck indicated that he has amassed a great deal of information from various sources including whistleblowers implicating Rove. He wrote in yesterday’s court filing that the "suspected lead perpetrator of this conspiracy against the civil rights of the plaintiffs and against the rule of law in the United States is Karl Rove.... Rove’s politicization of the Justice Department is currently being investigation by the US House Judiciary Committee.
Source
...what's new you ask? According to Arnebeck;
the Attorney General's office said they were ready to begin the investigation of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, and Arnebeck said he submitted a great deal of material to them, including "Bob's Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman's book on what happened in Ohio, documentation of the exit poll discrepancy, and John Conyers' report to the Congress which was the factual basis for the challenge to the electoral votes of the Ohio vote in January of 2005.
...Where is John Conyers?
Arnebeck also explained that he met with Conyers within the last two weeks. He made the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee aware of what they have: new resources and information, and the assistance of Spoonamore to help the state of Ohio, the Congress, and the court understand what needs to be done to help secure the 2008 election.
...What happened in Ohio in 2004?
Arnebeck plans to subpoena and depose GOP operative Michael (Mike) L. Connell
From Sourcewatch;
Michael (Mike) L. Connell is President, Chief Political Strategist and CEO of New Media Communications, Inc., a Republican website development and internet services firm based in Richfield, OH.
...From the press conference
According to Arnebeck, Connell "[D]esigns websites and he manages the information technology. Interestingly, he's done this for the Bush campaign of 2000 and the Bush campaign of 2004. Simultaneously, he was doing IT work for the State of Florida in 2000, and for the office of the [Ohio] Secretary of State in 2004.
Currently, Connell is running the IT operations for the McCain campaign.
...Arnebeck added:
"We're not saying that he [Connell] did anything wrong in the sense of his conduct, but we're saying that these conflicting roles raise some issues."
...And about those conflicts;
One of the more frightening aspects of Connell's work is that his company, Gov Tech Solutions, was the first private company to be allowed to put servers behind the firewall of the Congressional computer systems. This led to him creating and managing several powerful Committee IT networks, including those for the House Intelligence Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, the Judiciary Committee, the Ethics Committee, and the House Committee on Rules. Of course, it is completely possible that the firewall could have been created with secret security gaps that can be exploited to hack into any congressional computer. If that has happened, every computer in any senate or congressional office is subject to hacking by Bush/Republican operatives.
...The attorneys who hope to depose both him and Karl Rove, describe him in the interview as;
a "high IQ Forrest Gump," said to be "at the scene" of every GOP "crime" from Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 to the Karl Rove/RNC email flap to creation of the current Congressional computer network and firewall.
...Well, a Fox (or two) in our National Henhouse?
...Perhaps a "sternly worded" letter for the appearance op Karl Rove in the felonious theft of a national election is in order.
...I guess we can add it to the ever-growing list of crimes by Bu$hCo.
...you folks decide.