The Los Angeles Times analyzed two million prison records and concluded that Paris Hilton "will end up serving more time than 80% of other people in similar situations." I'll give you some material from the story after the jump, but first I think that you should look at what one of Sheriff Baca's toughest critics had to say after being informed of the facts in the case:

One of the most vocal critics, civil rights activist Najee Ali, said Wednesday that Hilton ought to be released if inmates sentenced for similar crimes were serving less time. He continued to criticize Baca's decision to cite medical problems for the release, but added that only dangerous offenders should serve their full sentences given the jail's need to limit overcrowding.

"Clearly, her violation is not as serious, so she should be released," said Ali, director of Project Islamic Hope. "The rules of fairness should be applied equally."

UPDATE: People are commenting without having read the diary. Please take the time to do that before making some howler of an error.

Hecklers, admirers bid farewell to Pinochet - CNN.com
QUICK VOTE
How will you remember Chile's General Pinochet?
Savior
Despot
Won't remember him"

Chilean journalist Jorge Fernando Garretón emailed, "Friends, the campaign to prevent a moral victory to Pinochet supporters is gaining in strength. Voting results have changed in the past two days since we became aware of the poll. Pinochet supporters have gained 1,556 votos this past 24 hours. We democrats have gained: 2,899 votos."

The current results are at 70% for Pinochet as a savior, 23% despot; and 7% won't remember him at all.

Why give them even this pathetic symbol of false victory? Click here to vote.

Jefferson County Voters Continue To Raise Concerns About Voting Machines
October 28,2006

[Excerpt]

Friday night, KFDM reported about people who had cast straight Democratic ticket ballots, but the touch-screen machines indicated they had voted a straight Republican ticket.

Some of those voters including Lamar University professor, Dr. Bruce Drury, believe the problem is a programming error.

Saturday, KFDM spoke to another voter who says it's not just happening with straight ticket voting, he says it's happening on individual races as well, Jerry Stopher told us when he voted for a Democrat, the Republican's name was highlighted.

UPDATE: See very practical action alert below. ALSO: Important diary on the fraud vs. incompetence issues at TexasKaos and what to do about educating voters to overcome them.

For immediate release: September 13, 2006

Media contact: Teresa Riordan, (609) 258-9754, triordan@princeton.edu; Steven Schultz, (609) 258-3617, sschultz@princeton.edu

Researchers reveal 'extremely serious' vulnerabilities in e-voting machines

In a paper published on the Web today, a group of Princeton computer scientists said they created demonstration vote-stealing software that can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected.

"We have created and analyzed the code in the spirit of helping to guide public officials so that they can make wise decisions about how to secure elections," said Edward Felten, the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, a new center at Princeton University that addresses crucial issues at the intersection of society and computer technology.

The paper appears on the Web site for the Center for Information Technology Policy.

Greg Palast's conspiracism isn't helpful

Joshua Holland at 11:50 AM on July 3, 2006.

The last thing anyone needs in what is shaping up to be a hyper-charged post-balloting environment is a bunch of conspiracy theories about the Mexican electoral institutions themselves.

I agree that it is possible that a fraud has occurred, but Palast's story is so historically inaccurate, that it really can't be taken seriously.

Ever-fiery Al Giordano has a much more cogent and reality-based report on what's going on in a discussion at U.S.-Style Post-Electoral Chaos Begins in Mexico. As might be expected, Al has already dismissed the election as fraudulent.

So what's really going on? Let's talk about that after the jump.
 

Now that I have finally received a response from Kos, I am posting it here, because I think that the incident raises issues that should be brought to the attention of the entire community.

If you agree with me, please recommend the diary. If you don't, please feel free to troll rate me in the comment that I am posting specifically in order to give you the opportunity to do so. I am also putting up a short poll, and I hope that you will vote.

To: Kos@dailykos.com

I'm copying this to several of the front pagers and/or prominent kossacks and Jerome Armstrong because I am baffled by the banning of Chris Floyd. I did a search on his diaries and comments I really haven't found anything that remotely justifies shutting him down.

Today Show Falsely Implies FNC Hid News of Cheney Beer NewsBusters.org

Here's how NBC White House reporter Kelly O'Donnell artfully chose her words:

"The official White House transcript of the interview shows Cheney said 'I had a beer at lunch.' Fox News did not show that particular clip during Brit Hume's program."

The New York Times mentions the beer remark as if it were part of the interview, but the Washington Post doesn't.

MSNBC Sleight of Hand

By Allan Sloan
Updated: 12:09 p.m. ET Feb. 8, 2006

[Excerpt]

Feb. 8, 2006 - Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.

His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.

By Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
Foreword by Simon Rosenberg

Reviewed by Jules Siegel

"Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."
-- Eli Pariser, MoveOn PAC, December 9, 2004

"Crashing the Gate" is a manifesto aimed at fixing the structural defects that have caused the steady decline of Democratic power since Lyndon B. Johnson abdicated in 1968. Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas brilliantly exploited bleeding-edge technology to create a new kind of interactive political media that brought open source journalism to the ordinary Internet user. They helped convert the netroots (the digital equivalent of grassroots) into a $40 million ATM for the Howard Dean campaign.

These are really serious questions. Electronic vote rigging is not even mentioned in "Crashing the Gate" as far as I can tell from my first reading. I am going to back and make sure about that, but it is definitely not a prominent issue.

Despite the attacks on "fraudsters" here on Dailykos, the evidence keeps rolling in that 2004 was rigged. Following after the jump, are excerpts from two reviews of "Fooled Again" that highlight some of the evidence. I find it especially significant that this book was published by a division of Basic Books, the United States' pre-eminent establishment publishing company.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The war in Iraq: Time to move on

[Excerpts]

We didn't agree with Jack Murtha in November when he called for an immediate withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq. The timing was not right. But the times have changed.

The nuclear saber-rattling of neighboring Iran is heading for a showdown. To meet that threat should diplomacy fail, the United States must begin the six- to nine-month logistical process of drawing down its Iraqi force and repositioning it to respond, if need be, to the Iranian threat.

By Tabassum Zakaria 29 minutes ago

[Excerpts]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Vice President Al Gore called on Monday for an independent counsel to investigate whether President George W. Bush broke the law in authorizing domestic eavesdropping without court approval.

"A special counsel should be immediately appointed by the attorney general to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the president," Gore said in a speech to The American Constitution Society and The Liberty Coalition.

Monday, September 26, 2005
Times-Picayune
Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated
Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated

6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center

By Brian Thevenot
and Gordon Russell
Staff writers

[Excerpts]

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA -- Beron doesn't remember his name -- came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Grandmother, 73, held as sausage looter

Witnesses, even deli owner, says church deaconess was wrongly arrested

By Bill Haber / AP

[Excerpts]

KENNER, La. - Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000.

Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

The family has not been able to visit her during her two weeks of confinement and was allowed to talk to her by phone for only a few minutes. The state prison declined to let the AP interview Maten by phone, demanding a written request.

Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour away. And the judge who set $50,000 bail by phone -- 100 times the maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts -- has not returned a week's worth of calls, her lawyer said.

Hastert Questions Rebuilding New Orleans

WASHINGTON -- It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview about New Orleans Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill.

Hastert later issued a statement saying he was not "advocating that the city be abandoned or relocated."

From what I've read, there are serious doubts about whether or not New Orleans can ever be made safe from severe hurricanes. The levee system seems to be a hodge-podge of improvisation. The remaining wetlands should never have been developed at all.

One might ask a similar question about the Hotel Zone of Cancun, where I live.

Slight Majority Say Bush Should Meet With Sheehan
Survey Suggests Mother's Actions Have Little Impact on War Views

By Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; 7:00 AM

[Excerpts]

Slightly more than half of the country says President Bush should meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed last year in Iraq, who is leading a protest against the war outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 52 percent of the public says Bush should talk to Sheehan, who has repeatedly asked for a meeting with the president, while 46 percent said he should not. Fifty-three percent support what she is doing while 42 percent oppose her actions, according to the poll.

Continue to see more of the shameless spin on this.

In "War Made Easy" Norman Solomon demolishes the myth of an independent American press zealously guarding sacred values of free expression. Although strictly focusing on the shameless history of media cheerleading for the principal post-World War II American wars, invasions and interventions, he calls into question by implication the idea of the press as some kind of institutional counterforce to government and corporate power.

The utter idiocy of many of the examples he has compiled in this impeccably documented historical review will be familiar to readers who follow the news on the Internet. They achieve fresh impact because of the way Solomon has organized and analyzed them.

The current voting is:

The Sheehan Controversy
Vacaville's Cindy Sheehan has sparked controversy with her presence outside Pres. Bush's Texas property. Her determination to meet with the President to ask him about why her son, Casey, died in Iraq has reinvigorated the opposition to the war and brought strong feeling to the fore, on both sides of the political spectrum. What do you think of her actions?
Total Votes = 1435
I support her effort to meet with Pres. Bush.
 652 Votes, or 45.43 %
She's doing more harm than good.
 758 Votes, or 52.82 %
I'm neutral on both her and the war.
 25 Votes, or 1.742 %

A little while ago, the proportions were reversed. Let's use our power to fix that. I never ask people to recommend my diaries, but I think this time is an exception. We can't let the Freepers make it look as if Cindy's hometown is against her.

Click here to go to the Vacaville reporter now.