The "Diebold Whistleblower" speaks out

Stephen Heller, the Diebold employee who in 2004 exposed documents showing that the company planned to use illegal, uncertified software in their California voting machines, speaks out at Bradblog on the reduction of his conviction from felon to misdemeanor, and about the different standards of justice that seems to apply to Republicans vs. those who would expose their misdeeds:

In brief, I became known to some as the "Diebold Whistleblower" when, in January of 2004, I stole and exposed legal documents [PDF] proving that Diebold Election Systems, Inc. was using and planned to continue using illegal, uncertified software in their California voting machines. (By the way, Diebold recently changed its name to Premier Election Solutions, but don't let that fool you; it's still the same bunch of idiots.) Details about my case can be found here and here [PDF].

[snip]

Now, one year after my guilty plea, because I've stayed out of trouble and because I'm a first offender, the judge has reduced my felony to a misdemeanor. Sometime in 2008, my lawyers will petition the court to have my misdemeanor expunged.

[snip]

So Scooter's obstruction of justice protected people who did something George H.W. Bush described as treasonous. That's a very serious crime, at least as serious as violating attorney-client privilege, don't you think? But no punishment for Scooter Libby, because IOKIYAR.

Heller goes on to cite how Alberto Gonzales will get away with his crimes involving the fired U.S. attorneys and torture, how the telecommunications companies will get away with their crimes involving spying on Americans without a warrant and for no reason, and how Hans Von Spakowsky derailed investiations into 2004 Ohio voting shenanigans.

It may very well be that because Republicans place loyalty to party over their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and because they have vowed to filibuster anything that might hold this Administration's crimes to account, the Democrats cannot obtain any accountability. But even if they can't succeed, they owe it to the American people, whether said people want it or not, to hammer these crimes home day after day after day.

Whether it's willful ignorance or a lack of civics education in our schools and colleges, most Americans neither know about nor care enough about the provisions of the Constitution to make sure they're upheld. For the first few years after the 9/11 attacks, the willingness to allow this Administration to run amok could be chalked up to the trauma of an attack on American soil. But it's time for Americans to wake up and recognize the march toward tyranny that is happening in Washington DC; a march that is being aided and abetted by efforts to change how California's electors are allocated so as to ensure a Republican win, whether that Republican is the secular fascist Rudy Giuliani, the theocratic fascist Mike Huckabee, or the opportunistic fascist Mitt Romney.

Perhaps the most unfortunate side effect of the 9/11 attacks has been the change in the meaning of patriotism from love of country to a kind of cult of personality; in which blind loyalty to a president equals patriotism, with the country -- and the precepts on which it was founded, simply an afterthought at best. The documents that were hammered out so that a new nation could get out from under the tyrannical rule of a king seem now to be just so much archaic language that because it's not at a second-grade level, is just "too hard" to bother reading and understand. Perhaps, like the easy reading, so-called plain English Bibles that are becoming more popular, it's time for "Constitution for Dummies."