Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Mystery solved! We now know who was behind the North Carolina robocalls:

Facing South has confirmed the source of the calls, and the mastermind is Women's Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based nonprofit which aims to boost voting among "unmarried women voters."

What's more, Facing South has learned that the firestorm Women's Voices has ignited in North Carolina isn't the group's first brush with controversy. Women's Voices' questionable tactics have spawned thousands of voter complaints in at least 11 states and brought harsh condemnation from some election officials for their secrecy, misleading nature and likely violations of election law.

Women's Voices Women Vote have an explanation worthy of the Bush Administration as to why this all happened:

The group's spokeswoman Sarah Johnson confirmed to me that those were the group's calls and said that they were part of an effort to register three million women voters in 24 states. The fact that the calls came shortly before the North Carolina primary, potentially confusing voters, was unfortunate mistake, she said. We're "incredibly apologetic about the timing of
this." The group was simply working at such a "high volume" that it was "extremely difficult to tailor the mailing to every single state's schedule," she said. The calls precede the mailers, she said, because it increases the rate of response.

Right. So... it's "Women's Voices Women Vote," correct? Then who the fuck is Lamont Williams? They have no answer.

Carpetbagger notes:

Under normal circumstances, an aboveboard voter registration effort would start a robo-call by saying, “This is so-and-so from Women’s Voices, Women Vote and I’m calling to…” But that’s not what happened here; instead the robo-calls used a made-up person to leave messages and at least gave the impression that someone might need to complete some additional paperwork before voting.

The whole thing seems kind of odd, doesn’t it?

Why yes, yes it does. Smells an awful lot like voter suppression still, and I have just one question: why does this look like Hillary supporters trying to ensure potential Obama voters are under the impression they can't vote until they've returned paperwork, eh? I hope an investigation ensues.

In other news, another Bush hack bites the dust:

At the request of the White House, General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan resigned last night as head of the government's premier contracting agency, ending a tumultuous tenure in which she was accused of trying to award work to a friend and misusing her authority for political ends.

[snip]

Doan's resignation came almost a year after Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he believed Doan could no longer be effective because of the allegations about her leadership.

Waxman's committee began investigating Doan after stories in The Washington Post showed that she had approved a $20,000, no-bid arrangement last July with a business run by a friend and had tried to reduce the budget of the agency's inspector general.

I'm sure she'll be missed - by those she was doing the favors for. The rest of us are just happy to advise her not to let the door hit her in the ass on the way out.

At this point, it'll be news if there's an honest person left in that bloody Administration.

Speaking of dishonest fucking bastards, check out Dick Cheney's latest hit:

The always-creative team of Dick Cheney and his lawyers are at it again.

The lawyer for US vice-president Dick Cheney claimed [Monday] that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behaviour on the job.

The exception claimed by Cheney’s counsel came in response to requests from Congressional Democrats that David Addington, the vice-president’s chief of staff, testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.

Ruling out voluntary cooperation by Addington, Cheney lawyer Kathryn Wheelbarger said Cheney’s conduct is “not within the [congressional] committee’s power of inquiry”.

“Congress lacks the constitutional power to regulate by law what a vice-president communicates in the performance of the vice president’s official duties, or what a vice president recommends that a president communicate,” Wheelbarger wrote to senior aides on Capitol Hill.

I see. So, last year, Dick Cheney couldn’t be regulated by executive-branch rules because, he said, he’s not actually part of the executive branch. This year, Dick Cheney can’t be regulated by the legislative branch, either.

Next thing you know, good old Dick "Shoot Your Friends in the Face and Your Country in the Head" Cheney'll be claiming an exemption from God's wary eye.

However, I doubt he'll be able to run from a Democratic majority next year. Mwah-ha-ha.