Voting…America’s last privilege losing its integrity..?

It wasn’t too long ago that America was suffering from voter-itis or even voter-phobia. During the General Elections where the Office of the President was being determined, voter turnout had dipped so low that many believe that there were alternative reasons for why the voting age was lowered from 21 years of age to 18 years of age regardless of military service or the ability for soldiers to drink on base.

Quite openly perhaps with the addition of Rock the Vote targeting younger individuals; moreover, it is the organizations that RTV has aligned themselves with such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Instagram, to name just a few, Rock the Vote boasts of registering well over 5 million voters just for the 2008 General Election. This is a great opportunity for younger folks to at least put some of their civics lessons to work.

Yet for every one step forward it seems as though our country takes a minimum of three steps backward. The disgusting behavior of the New Black Panther Party was one, the undeniable voter fraud activities taken in by ACORN, and now in New Mexico, Indiana, Missouri, and Florida have filed multiple complaints of voter registration fraud.

We are of the opinion that voting in the U.S. has totally lost its integrity. The simple act of voting that has been made easier for various groups in our nation, is a task made so easy and that, my friends is on purpose!

We are fastly entering a phase of suffrage in our nation when we have special interest groups arguing over photo voter identification cards, or thumbprints, or even retinal scanning. Why? Perhaps they won’t be able to rig such elections as easily as they have been in recent years.

Illegal immigrants have been gripping about the inability to get identification with their photographs on them, except for maybe the Matricula Card issued to them by the governments they came from. We just can’t understand why the complaining insofar as the Department of Motor Vehicles could openly be seen as the next step.

The state of Texas is a classic example. Hearing the cries from the disenfranchised people about the costs, polling place, transportation to and from their ballot box, and on and on – that the state of Texas put out mandates that completely eliminated every complaint that anyone had to offer – the state allowed for accommodations in costs – the state would pay any fees associated with voting; furthermore, on the transportation issue the state is prepared to put local voting apparatus in areas where those who can’t get in to vote could be shuttled to their local precinct and after voting given the same shuttle service back to their homes. Moreover, the state issued a voter reimbursement program whereby they would mail the person all of the voting particulars and ask for collection about 30 days after the election!

We can assure you that many states have gone still further than Texas; but what did Texas receive for this open display of social welfare? They got sued by the United States through the Justice Department. Other than ferrying guns and other weapons in Fast & Furious doesn’t DOJ have some better more constructive things to do?

You make the call…

Okay, alright already, we’ve had enough already. Just a hypothetical for our “if this – then that” friends out there; please participate or else we’ll thinks it’s us.

Therefore we thought of comparing like items to get a preview of what product we wanted to purchase. Aww, a new sports car ought to do it. By popular demand the two like cars chosen were the Mercedes-Benz SLK Class and the Porsche Boxster – both convertibles. I’m not sure if we were in for it as much as the vehicle industry has changed and/or if we were just looking at foreign cars, both being from Germany.

Our judging criteria was pretty simple based on looks, performance, maintenance, up-keep, future expectations, and last and surely not least was price. Both cars were essentially the same cost; performance proved mutual; the maintenance, and upkeep were nearly identical. Therefore what was the biggest disparity we found was in price, out of the door, and per year. Porsche’s Boxster is roughly priced by dealers at 55K upwards of 65K. However, when compared to the Mercedes SLC lowest version available it ran from 58K upwards of almost 200K!

Well it was a great exercise and we started wondering whether or not our government does the same basic due-diligence before making huge expenses with the taxpayers money. Just think of Solyndra and other green expenditures or simply Obamacare.

Here is the latest in a realm of disbelief: Think and analyze before you spend. From today’s Fox News:

New research finds that wind farms actually warm up the surface of the land underneath them during the night, a phenomena that could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution.

Researchers used satellite data from 2003 to 2011 to examine surface temperatures across as wide swath of west Texas, which has built four of the world’s largest wind farms. The data showed a direct correlation between night-time temperatures increases of 0.72 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) and the placement of the farms.

“Given the present installed capacity and the projected growth in installation of wind farms across the world, I feel that wind farms, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional meteorology,” Liming Zhou, associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany and author of the paper published April 29 in Nature Climate Change said in an e-mail to Discovery News.

Analysts say wind power is a good complement to solar power, because winds often blow more strongly at night while solar power is only available during daytime hours. But Zhou and his colleagues found that turbulence behind the wind turbine blades stirs up a layer of cooler air that usually settles on the ground at night, and mixes in warm air that is on top.

That layering effect is usually reversed during the daytime, with warm air on the surface and cooler air higher up.”The year-to-year land surface temperature over wind farms shows a persistent upward trend from 2003 to 2011…”

One solution could be to change the shape of the turbine blades, according to John Dabiri, director of the Center for Bioinspired Wind Energy at the California Institute of Technology who is an expert on wind power design.

“Smaller turbines can avoid this problem,” Dabiri said. “However, this presents a tradeoff, because wind speed decreases as you move closer to the ground; so the smaller turbines would experience lower incoming wind speeds on average.” (Please read more of this incredible story!)

All of this over “Voter ID”?

A photo ID requirement for voters in Texas could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered Hispanics, the Justice Department declared Monday in its latest move against Republican-led voting changes in many states that have drawn protests from minorities, poor people and students.

This is such smoke and mirrors rubbish we believe. It is essential that we make mention of the facts that Texas has gone so far as to provide (free of charge) a “Voter’s Certificate” without photo identification for any or all of these alleged disenfranchised folks. Moreover, Texas has made it public knowledge that even if a person does not have a Voter Certification with them, they can still vote anyway – so long as the voter procures one within six days after they vote.

And oh how we love the use of the word disenfranchised. Before anyone goes off on some half-cocked scheme that allows this word to be given over to the politically correct police for simple mutilation, let’s look at the word and what it means now.

Disenfranchisement is taking the right to vote from someone; to no longer allow someone to have the right to vote. Now seriously people is anyone being disenfranchised by Texas, South Carolina, or any of the other numerous states that require a photo identification. Plain and simple…NO!

The Justice objection means that now a federal court in Washington will decide whether Texas, as well as South Carolina, will be allowed to enforce its new voter photo ID requirements. Justice’s move merely blocked a Texas law until the court rules.

Other states have similar laws and more are moving toward them as advocates portray the restrictions as needed to combat voter fraud.

The Justice Department conveyed its objection in a letter to Texas officials that was also filed in the U.S. District Court case in Washington between Texas and the department. Justice said Hispanic voters in Texas are at least 50 percent more likely and possibly more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic voters to lack a driver’s license or a personal state-issued photo ID, which the Texas law requires.

Here is our exact point: If Texas law requires adults or those of age to have a personal state-issued photo ID, why is this disenfranchisement even being considered? The state has done nothing wrong and the residents have.

Therefore we ask again, what is Attorney General Eric Holder up too? We should add that AG Holder dished this particular bit of rubbish over to the Civil Rights Division of Justice where it now is being monitored and harassed by Assistant A.G. Tony Perez.

Voter ID bills were “the hottest topic of legislation in the field of elections in 2011,” as legislation was introduced in 34 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Since the beginning of the 2011 legislative session, eight states have passed photo ID laws: Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Rhode Island. All but two were enacted by Republican legislatures and Republican governors.

Mississippi’s law was passed by voter referendum placed on the ballot by a Democratic House and a Republican Senate. Rhode Island’s law was enacted by a Democratic legislature and an independent governor.

This year, the Republican-controlled Virginia General Assembly and Senate passed a voter ID measure, which Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell is expected to sign. In Pennsylvania, the Republican-controlled House debated a photo ID measure on Monday; if it is approved, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is expected to sign it.

The new photo ID requirements have become a point of contention in the 2012 elections. Liberal groups say the push for these requirements is led by Republicans aiming to disenfranchise people who tend to vote Democratic – African-Americans, Hispanics, the poor and college students.

For the past three months, Attorney General Eric Holder has been especially vocal about voting rights. “We need election systems that are free from fraud, discrimination and partisan influence – and that are more, not less, accessible to the citizens of this country,” the attorney general said recently in a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.

Proponents of such legislation say the measures are needed to combat voter fraud. But advocacy groups for minorities and the poor argue there is no significant voter fraud.

 

 

Obama administration blocks Texas voter ID law…with Holder and Perez

“We the People”…what a concept! When the Founding Fathers were working tirelessly with relentless savvy putting this nation together they knew much about human nature and the lengths that humans would go to achieve power albeit, legally or illegally.

Moreover, the Founding Fathers knew to what degree humankind would flex, sway, or bend any law – anywhere to see to it that man would get his way. Early in the Constitution ratification process they were very concerned about factions; either a majority faction or a minority faction that could disrupt the normal flow of governance.

Therefore our question for our reader’s today is the following:

How does the governed go about redressing a minority faction who seems to rear its ugly head every time something happens that doesn’t go their way?

Again in Federalist 10 James Madison writes about defining the faction, curing the faction (basically removing causes that fuel the faction), destroying the faction by either destroying the faction’s liberty or to equalize its passions, and removing all associated causes that have caused the faction.

This all sounds great for cleaning up a mess – especially during the time that the mess was created. If there is any difference between the original drafting of the Constitution and starting at the Fourteenth Amendment and henceforth, the two distinct parts almost work as a faction itself. Suffice it to say that the original 10 Amendments were ratified after the Constitution itself; therefore additions such as the Fourteenth Amendment – written a century later have been worked and tooled by lawyers, scholars, judges and litigators that really acts as a faction rather than anything otherwise.

Allow us to illustrate. The Obama administration on Monday blocked a new Texas law requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot out of concerns it could harm some Hispanic voters who lack such identification.

The state law approved in May 2011 required voters to show government-issued photo identification, which could include a driver’s license, a military identification card, a birth certificate with a photo, a current U.S. passport, or a concealed handgun permit.

The Justice Department said that data from Texas showed that almost 11 percent of Hispanic voters, just over 300,000, did not have a driver’s license or state issued identification card, and that plans to mitigate those concerns were incomplete.

“Hispanic registered voters are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic registered voters to lack such identification,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a letter to the Texas director of elections outlining the objection.

This is the second state voter identification law blocked by the Obama administration, which earlier objected to a strict new law in South Carolina that it prevented from taking effect. South Carolina then sued in federal court seeking approval of its law.

Under the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, certain states like Texas must seek approval from the Justice Department or the federal courts for changes made to state voting laws and boundaries for voting districts which the State’s Attorney General had already done through the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Obama administration has already challenged the state’s attempt to re-draw congressional districts and that fight is now before the courts. Texas has also sued to get approval for its voter identification law.

Several other states, including Kansas and Wisconsin, have adopted stricter new voter identification laws, arguing that they were necessary to prevent fraud at the ballot box. However some civil rights groups have said that the laws threatened to suppress minority voters. How we wonder?

In Texas, the Justice Department said that potential voters would have to have two other identification documents to get a certificate allowing them to vote, which could require paying expensive fees for copies of legal documents such as birth certificates. This is just plain false; Texas has guaranteed – at the state’s expense – that voters lacking photo identification could – free of charge be issued a “voting certificate.”

Efforts to educate voters about the new identification requirements were also incomplete and the state did not submit any evidence of voter impersonation not already addressed under existing state laws, the administration said.

“The state has failed to demonstrate why it could not meet its stated goals of ensuring electoral integrity and deterring ineligible voters from voting in a manner that would have voided this retrogressive effect,” Perez said.

Dished up and smoldering in flames of bull squat, Obama, Holder, and Perez have started this action and just as any other factious excrement should be dealt with and flushed.

Supreme Court and Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider rolling back university affirmative action programs, re-entering a racially charged debate by accepting an appeal from a rejected white applicant to the University of Texas.
The appeal takes aim at a 2003 Supreme Court decision that said universities could continue to consider the race of their applicants to help ensure campus diversity.

We will not dignify this debate by taking a position as to whether affirmative action is racially charged; moreover, hiding this and other programs under the unbrella of “diversity” is really insulting to the reader.
Universities have had the court’s blessing for affirmative action since the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision gave race-conscious admissions a limited endorsement. With five of the nine current justices openly skeptical about racial classifications, today’s action suggests the court at a minimum will scale back diversity programs.

Here is what is at issue: Whether a university’s use of race to grant admission violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection?
On September 15, 2011, Ms. Fisher filed her petition for writ of certiorari, which Mountain States Legal Foundation supported with an amicus curiae brief on October 19, 2011.

Ms. Fisher of Sugar Land, who graduated in the top 12 percent of her class, Rachel Multer and Ms. Michalewicz of Buda, who graduated in the top 11 percent of their class, applied for but were denied admission.
In April 2008, they sued the University and its officials in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin, alleging that they were denied the right to compete for admission on an equal footing with minority students in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. On August 17, 2009, the district court ruled in favor of the University of Texas based upon the Supreme Court’s holding in Grutter.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on race-conscious admission policies in the Texas public-university system. Abigail Noel Fisher sued the University of Texas in 2008 when her application was rejected when less academically qualified minority students were accepted. Ms. Fisher argues the race-based admissions policy violated her rights under the 14th Amendment, specifically the equal protection clause which says no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Of course we understand that Ms.Fisher at 12 percent of her class, whilst Rachel Multer and Ms. Michalewicz were in the top 11 percent. However, if the University of Texas is indeed using this as their yard stick measure, then persons of 13 percent and higher should be willing to wait rather than to be accepted under some ridiculous “diversity” constraint. Therefore hopefully one can easily see where we will not dignify this issue by weighing in such a ridiculous set of claims.

Accountable Until the End

Nice n' Comfy now

 “Texas 7″ fugitive who dropped appeals executed

“Let’s do the right thing – for once,” he explained in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “My parents raised me to be accountable.”

Say what you like-good or bad-yet Michael Rodriquez in the end showed some decency.

 

A member of the infamous “Texas 7″ gang of escaped fugitives was executed Thursday for killing a Dallas-area police officer during their weeks on the run. Michael Rodriguez, who had dropped all appeals and volunteered for lethal injection, apologized profusely to the officer’s widow and his own former sister-in-law before the lethal injection. He had been serving a life sentence for killing his wife at the time of the 2000 escape. “My punishment is nothing compared to the pain and suffering I’ve brought you,” Rodriguez said. “I’m not strong enough to ask for forgiveness. I ask the Lord to forgive. I’ve done horrible things that brought sorrow and pain to these wonderful people,” he said, looking directly at the women. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” he said. As the drugs took effect, Rodriguez, 45, was praying in a whisper. “I’m ready to go, Lord,” he said.

Kudos and hat tip to MICHAEL GRACZYK for his portion above; moreover, it is a great article from a different perspective…from the ‘other side.’ Please continue to read by clicking here.  

Hat Tip