Actually fear isn't quite the only arrow left in the Republican quiver

There's also disenfranchisement via lies and thuggery:

An anonymous flier circulating in African-American neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia states that voters who are facing outstanding arrest warrants or who have unpaid traffic tickets may be arrested at the polls on Election Day.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison, who learned of the flier last week, said that the message is completely false.

"The only thing that police officers are going to do that we'll be encouraging that day is that they'll be exercising their own individual right to vote," Gillison said.

He plans to put up statements on the city and police Web sites to let citizens know that the handouts are false. He said that he also will record a public-service announcement for broadcast.

Gillison referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office and the district attorney.

"We are not going to stand for any intimidation of voters," Gillison said. "Not in this city."

He said that he did not know who was behind the fliers, which appear to be targeted at supporters of Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

But telling people to beware of voting if they have outstanding warrants is an old trick. In Maryland's 2002 gubernatorial election, anonymous fliers in African-American communities warned people to pay parking tickets and resolve outstanding warrants before heading to the polls.

"It seems to be clearly aimed at lower-income voters that might have had some problems in the past and clearly aimed at discouraging people from voting," said Zack Stalberg, who heads the political-watchdog group Committee of Seventy.

Stalberg said that he feared that there could be more fliers to come.

"I'm a little surprised it appeared this far before Election Day," he said. "It's another indication of how dirty this election might become."

"Might" become? How about "has already become"? Already there are reports of massive voter roll purges of college students, Black and Hispanic voters, and those on foreclosure lists. Crimes against the right to vote are being documented here.

With Sarah Palin playing the "patriotism" card by hammering Barack Obama's passing acquaintance with William Ayers at the same time as she and her husband have been supporters of an Alaska secessionist movement, someone (and it isn't going to be Tom Brokaw, you may be assured of that) needs to ask John McCain and his trophy running mate just why they are so afraid of the voters.

(h/t)

Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Tristero, for pointing out just how deeply into the gutter John the Maverick War Hero MaCain is willing to go to get the presidency to which he's felt entitled since he got back from Vietnam.

Money quote:

Don't show me Obama's leading by two whole points in the polls. That is, for all intents and purposes, a tie. By any reality-based standard, this election should be a rout. The Republicans fielded a buffoon and a sociopath while Democrats chose genuine leaders. Racism explains a lot of it. Media bias explains a lot of it. But it is also the case that Democrats are hellbent on avoiding mentioning anything that could possibly be thought "unclean" when the Republicans have demonstrated that no sewer is so foul they won't stoop to disgorge its stinking mess into the public discourse.

The tumor of the soul never went away

I've always been skeptical of deathbed conversions. Some of it has to do with this notion that seems to exist among conservative Christians that salvation has nothing to do with deeds, just faith. You can bugger little boys in the choirloft, cheat on your wife, embezzle money, burn down your neighbor's house, and none of it matters as long as you believe Jesus died just so you could do all these things.

When Lee Atwater, who was Karl Rove's mentor in the politics of destruction, was dying from a brain tumor, he called for an excision of the "tumor of the soul" in American politics. Horse, barn door, etc. Perhaps bigger people than I am can forgive, but when you look at what Atwater's politics of destruction used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 led to, including the presidency of his then-employer's son, it's hard to look at what happened to Atwater as anything other than "Payback's a bitch, asshole." The only thing that kept me from doing that is the desire to be perhaps just a bit better. Not too much better, because sometimes trying to rise above people who want to drag you into the gutter just leaves you face down flat in the mud with a jackboot on the small of your back.

Bill Moyers talked about Lee Atwater a number of years ago:

Atwater may be best known for turning Willie Horton into not just a household name, but also a generic term, like "Kleenex", for any kind of demonology done in politics. The most recent example, of course, is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But what I remember Atwater most for is how he turned the Pledge of Allegiance into a major campaign issue.

In 1988, Joseph Sobran wrote in National Review about the Pledge dustup:

WHILE THE MEDIA were preoccupied with whether Dan Quayle had once squeezed Paula Parkinson a little too close, Mike Dukakis ran into some real trouble: tbe Pledge of Allegiance.

Dukakis explained what his problem was: the Massachusetts state supreme court had given him an advisory opinion that it was unconstitutional. "If the Vice President is saying he'd sign an unconstitutional bill," Dukakis retorted, "then in my judgment he's not fit to hold the office [of President]." Wrong answer, Mike,

Though in practice the Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means, Dukakis must be the first to suggest it means what the Massachusetts supreme court says it means. He only made things worse byfalling back on New Class elitism: the judges know best!

Meanwhile, Bush, who had been down as much as 18 points in the polls, shot ahead by as much as nine points.

[snip]

THE MEDIA themselves were shrieking that the Pledge issue was dirty pool. Newsweek charged that Bush had "seized the low ground," Time loftily deplored "the efforts to impugn Dukakis's patriotism." The New York Times hauled out its own constitutional experts to declare Dukakis correct. Anthony Lewis sniffed McCarthyism in Bush's tactics.

All these defenses may have compounded the damage to Dukakis. In a presidential campaign, you don't want to be the sort of guy whose patriotism has to be debated.

Indeed.

And yet, the debate about what constitutes patriotism has infected our politics ever since. Whether it's a photograph of John Kerry who just happened to be at the same Vietnam War rally as Jane Fonda in the 1960's, or the "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" meme that Republicans have used as a cudgel with which to beat Democrats senseless for the last seven years, patriotism seems always to be defined as unquestioning acceptance of everything the head of the Executive Branch does-- if that Executive branch consists of Republicans. When it's a Democrat, all bets are off.

Now, Lee Atwater's star disciple, Karl Rove, is preparing to convince Americans that their impending foreclosure doesn't matter, that their job is moving to the Philippines doesn't matter, that the dollar is now only barely acceptable currency in New York City, that billions of dollars have disappeared into Bush crony pockets in Iraq and that thousands of Americans are dead, that America is now hated all over the world -- none of that matters. What's really important is whether or not the candidate wears a cheap flag pin made in the very country that owns us outright now -- China.

There are Democrats, particularly blue-collar Democrats, who defect to McCain because they see McCain as a patriotic figure and they see Obama as an elitist who's looking down his nose at 'em. Which he is. That comment where he said, you know, "After 9/11, I didn't wear a flag lapel pin because true patriotism consists of speaking out on the issues, not wearing a flag lapel pin"? Well, to a lot of ordinary people, putting that flag lapel pin on is true patriotism. It's a statement of their patriotic love of the country. And for him to sit there and dismiss it as he did—

You're not wearing a flag pin, Karl.
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But I respect those who consciously get up in the morning and put a flag lapel pin on.

And that, my friends, is the big issue for this fall's election campaign, unless the Democrats stop assuming that Americans are too smart to fall for this. They did it in 1988. They did it when they were frightened about 9/11. And when the Very Scary Notion of someone other than an old white guy being president is added to the mix, it will probably work.

You aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you

MSNBC is reporting that two contract employees at the State Department have been fired and one "disciplined" after an investigation revealed they were illegally accessing Barack Obama's passport file.

More on this as it develops.

UPDATES AS THEY OCCUR: Howard Fineman on Countdown is wondering how much the higher-ups at State knew about these three contract employees. The breach occurred in January at the Consular Affairs office.

It's interesting to note that Bill Clinton's passport files were breached by the first Bush Administration in 1991.

I suspect that by tomorrow this will be whitewashed as "a few bad apples", but I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that it's possible these employees were chosen specifically so that they could be easily jettisoned if the breach were discovered, as it apparently now has been.

8:32 PM: There's going to be a conference call at 9. A senior State Department official says there were no political considerations. The official says that the contract employees accessed Obama's records "out of curiosity". The most recent incident was on March 14 -- months after the initial breach on January 9 -- and no one every contacted the Obama campaign or Barack Obama to notify about the breach. "No political considerations. Yeah, right. And I am Marie of Rumania.

8:40 PM: Andrea Mitchell is incredulous that no one at State seemed to take this seriously. She points out, how can you ascribe motivation until you know more about the people involved? At least at MSNBC, they smell blood here. "This at least rises to the level of spectacular incompetence, if not political skulduggery."

8:46 PM: Pete Williams is spewing the State Department's spin that this was just a case of "imprudent curiosity" on the part of these contract employees. My question is why "imprudent curiosity" took place in the form of accessing this particular individual's file, and why this "imprudent curiosity" took the form of multiple accesses over the course of three months.

8:50: State Department is stating that Obama's passport file was accessed in January, February, and March. Again -- why did "innocent curiosity" warrant three separate accesses? And why was this not referred to Obama's campaign or Senate office until today?

8:55: Eric Holder from the Obama campaign is on the phone with Keith Olbermann. Holder says that if you had one incident it could be someone snooping around, but when you have three separate incidents, one in each of the three months, he wonders as a former prosecutor just what is going on here. He wants to know why this was never referred to the Justice Department. He says at the least this is serious administrative bungling, and at worst a criminal offense that should be referred to the Justice Department. It's the pattern that he finds disturbing.

It's hard for me to imagine that this is just a question of "imprudent curiosity." Whether these employees were paid by someone doing opposition research, or if they thought that someone MIGHT pay for this information, whether an opposing campaign or a media outlet, that someone tried to keep this under wraps as it went on for three months is certainly suspicious.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

10:00 PM: Watching Anderson Cooper now; he's on the phone with Joe deGenova, who investigated the breach of Bill Clinton's passport files. It seems that the State Department spin now is that low-level State Department officials did not pass the information up. Frankly, all this, combined with the Secret Service calling off the Dallas police last month from checking people entering a rally for firearms, makes me wonder just how committed the people who are assigned to protect Barack Obama are to doing that.

Reports keep mentioning the "alert systems" that trigger when an unauthorized breach takes place, but that doesn't explain how this took place three times and no one kicked it upstairs.

Color me skeptical.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Marshall notes:

According to a new piece out in the Post from Glenn Kessler, the breaches occurred Jan. 9th, Feb. 21st and March 14th.

That would be the day after the New Hampshire primary, the day of the Democratic debate in Texas and the day the Wright story really hit.