Today, U.S. troops withdrew from urban areas in Iraq. It is a momenteous moment, but hardly time to break out the champagne.

Yes, it signals a change in our involvement there. But, as Great Britain's Winston Churchill said when the London bombings ceased, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."

Even as we mark this step, we mourn the death of four soldiers in Bagdhad on June 29, 2009, and the more than 25 civilians dead in Kirkuk June 30. We must remember that the U.S. still has large encampments in forward areas and bombers have not given up killing fellow Iraqis.

But perhaps we can remember today as, "The end of the beginning."

For video of troop withdrawals, Iraqi celebrations, and sadly, the Kirkuk car bombing, see these online B.B.C. reports.

The New York Times is in support of requiring election boards to use electronic voting machines that use optical-scan voting. The Times notes, "With optical scans, voters fill out a paper ballot that is then read by computer — much like a standardized test." How do you think this bill would go over in Ohio?

OPINION | June 22, 2009
Editorial: How to Trust Electronic Voting
Congress should pass a bill introduced by Representative Rush Holt that would ban paperless electronic voting in all federal elections.

Let's keep up our guard!

From Washington Post blogs, June 18, 2009

The Fix: Bush Takes on Obama

"After months of silence, former president George W. Bush launched a broad-scale critique of President Obama's approach to economic policy, national security and health care during a speech in Pennsylvania."

Dan Blaz's Take: Obama opponents finding their voice

Confused by reports that the Obama Administration asked the Supreme Court not to take on an appeal of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy banning gays in the military?

Here's a lucid explanation from the Washington Post, June 8, 2009.

Supreme Court Turns Down 'Don't Ask' Challenge
By William Branigin

In the "don't ask, don't tell" case, the Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration, which had urged the justices not to hear the appeal against the policy, even though Obama is on record as opposing it. The court thus spared the administration from having to defend in court a policy that the president eventually wants to abolish pending a review by the Pentagon.

Joan Walsh

Salon.com

Jun. 02, 2009 |

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy meet in Washington Tuesday.

 

Bravo, Pat Leahy. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee succumbed to an outbreak of passion and candor today, fiercely defending Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor from personal, fact-free right-wing attacks. Leahy called the assault on Sotomayor "unbelievable" and "vicious," and pledged to move up her confirmation hearings – Republicans want to delay them, to have more time to scrutinize her record -- if the attacks continue.

 

"I'll tell you one thing that will motivate me to go sooner, rather than later," Leahy said, according to Mike Madden. "When you have vicious attacks by leading Republicans call her the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan, and call her a bigot, totally false and outrageous charges, and there's only one place she can answer those charges would be in a hearing, we want her to have a chance to answer those charges."

 

On "Hardball" today, Pat Buchanan said he agreed the right should "stop the name-calling" -- that's the same Buchanan who's called Sotomayor an "affirmative action pick," "a lightweight" and "an anti-white judge," and mocked her for mastering English by reading children's books while in college. Now Buchanan says conservatives should stop the slurs and instead focus on her "long record of race-based justice."

 

Buchanan's attack illustrates the fact-free nature of the right's assault on Sotomayor, because, of course, he can't name one case in which she made a race-based decision, except to cite the vexing complaint of Frank Ricci in New Haven. In that case, Sotomayor was part of a majority that voted not to hear the case, upholding the city's findings and a lower-court decision -- a relatively conservative, status-quo judicial move, not at all a radical or race-based stance.

 

In fact, as Tom Goldstein reported on SCOTUSblog, a survey of Sotomayor's rulings in 96 race-discrimination cases showed her voting against the plaintiff 80 percent of the time. And of the 10 cases where she did side with the plaintiff, nine decisions were unanimous. Glenn Greenwald himself has focused on two specific cases where Sotomayor made decisions that should make Buchanan smile: ruling against Glenn's own client, a sympathetic African-American nurse suing a hospital (and a later court decision actually found for Glenn's plaintiff with a seven-figure award), and the case of a white New York Police Department desk worker who was fired for using racial slurs in work e-mails. (Sotomayor dissented in that case, siding with the white employee and finding his First Amendment rights had been violated by his firing.)

 

Any cursory review of Sotomayor's judicial record shows she is not an ideologue. In fact, she will -- and she should -- face questions from liberals about her views on abortion, the right to privacy and Roe v. Wade, about executive privilege and state secrets; about gay rights. But the race-based jihad against Sotomayor is silly and, frankly, racist.

 

Still, it's fun to watch the Republican Party self-destruct. Manuel Miranda, the former chief of staff to former Sen. Bill Frist forced to resign for hacking Democratic staffers' e-mail accounts, is leading a crusade to make Senate Republicans filibuster Sotomayor -- even though he led the charge to make it impossible for Democrats to filibuster Republican judicial nominees back when he worked for the GOP Senate majority. Got that? I guess the irrepressible Miranda just doesn't have time for consistency.

 

But Miranda is not merely insulting Sotomayor, insisting "she could Bork herself" because "she has a temper" and "an attitude." (Oh, and Jeffrey Rosen? Miranda says he's based his case against Sotomayor on your reporting. No more blogging for you!) In an interview with Politico, Miranda also slurred Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell as "limp-wristed" for refusing to fight Sotomayor more viciously. Snap! McConnell actually voted against Sotomayor in 1998 when Bill Clinton promoted her, because he believed "she'd bring pre-existing personal and political beliefs into the courtroom," he told Politico, and he added, "many of the same concerns I had about Judge Sotomayor 11 years ago persist."

 

So how much more negative does Miranda need McConnell to get? Does the minority leader need to call her a racist and belittle her intelligence, as Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan have, to be man enough for Miranda? This is going to be worse on Republicans than it will be on Sotomayor, trust me. They are in the process of Borking their whole party, for years to come.

By Jill Filipovic
Alternet.org

Posted June 2, 2009

George Tiller, a Kansas physician, was shot to death in church on Sunday. He was one of only a handful of doctors in the United States providing late-term therapeutic abortions for women in need -- women whose pregnancies threatened their lives or their health, and women who learned that they were carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities. Women traveled across the country to see Tiller when their own physicians and local medical providers couldn't help them. For many women, Tiller was, as one of his patients put it, "the one shining light in the worst week of my life".

He was also a major lightening-rod in the abortion wars. Anti-choicers harassed his patients, day in and day out. They bombed his clinic. They shot him once before. They filed lawsuit after lawsuit and even convinced local prosecutors to launch criminal investigations and trials (none were successful). They published his home address and the full names of his family members on their websites. They posted information about anyone who did business with him, from where he got his coffee to where he did his dry cleaning.

They had him and his staff wearing bullet-proof vests to work every day. Tiller drove an armored car and protected his home with a state-of-the-art security system. And, to better enable stalking and harassment, they posted his daily comings and goings -- including the fact that he attended services every Sunday at Reformation Lutheran Church, the place where he was ultimately shot and killed.

Read the rest of the story here.

Q&A from UA Progressive Action Event

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner spoke to a crowd of interested and informed voters April 30, 2009, at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Hall in Columbus.

Interest in Brunner and her office was very lively, and she could not answer all questions in the time allotted. She graciously took several unaswered questions and sent thoughtful and complete replies. Upper Arlington Progressive Action appreciates the effort it took her to do so.

Q1) Representatives from our immigrant communities have said that there were many
difficulties in their inability to read ballots. What are some solutions?

A1) Federal rules around printing ballots in languages other than English state that a certain percentage of voters within a jurisdiction must use that language as a primary language before local election officials are required to provide such ballots. Currently there are no jurisdictions in Ohio that meet that percentage. That fact may change after the 2010 census.

Registered voters are allowed to ask for assistance from trusted friends and family members for a number of reasons while casting a ballot. Assistance in translating languages is one of those reasons, as long as the individual offering assistance does not try to influence how a registered voter votes at the time of casting the ballot. The Secretary of State’s office has made a commitment to providing voter education materials to all communities and is producing a piece that will be translated into non-English versions.

Q2) Ohio election rights activists have reported that ballots from the 2004 election were to be
saved as evidence have been destroyed. Do you know about this? Can anything be done
about it?

A2) The question you raise is one of the subjects of an on-going federal court case, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell. Due to the fact that the litigation is still pending, this office is limited in terms of how we can respond. In September of 2006, the court ordered each of Ohio’s 88 county Boards of Elections to preserve all ballots from the 2004 Presidential election. When the current Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, took office she recognized that the preservation of that much material was, due to space limitations, very burdensome on the individual county boards of elections. Therefore, the court granted the Secretary’s request to take custody of the ballots in April of 2007. Since that time Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s office has meticulously retained all of the ballots in a secure, climate-controlled environment.

Q3) With the overall budget crunch affecting Ohio state government, how is the Secretary of
State’s office dealing with this?

A3) The Secretary of State’s office depends upon the state’s General Revenue Fund (GRF) for about 13% of its overall budget. The balance comes primarily from Business Services filing fees and federal funds from the Help America Vote Act of 2002. During the current fiscal year (FY 2009), the SOS has voluntarily reduced its GRF budget four times - when most other stateagency budgets were also cut.

Our GRF spending for the new two year budget period is expected to continue at that lower level. The agency is reviewing all its expenses and will live within that lower level of spending. We will do our part to manage operations with less dollars
while still maintaining excellent services for the citizens and businesses that we serve. The Secretary of State’s office also believes in the importance of partnerships not only as a good practice, but also in terms of resource sharing. For example, our Voting Rights Institute partners with some of the best and brightest advocates and academics that volunteer their
time to work with the office on key projects and on the VRI Advisory Council. Additionally, our office sought out and has been awarded grant dollars for several projects.

Q4) Do you believe that a move of Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday would be advisable for general elections?

A4) In 1845, Congress established voting day to be the first Tuesday of November to accommodate both farmers because of its agrarian society and those needing to travel to cast a ballot (severe winter storms were not yet prevalent in most of the country) and to bring uniformity to the voting process, as some states had voted earlier, while others voting later. Although minimal statistical data has been presented to show voter turnout increasing or decreasing with a change of Election Day, with the widespread use of early and “no fault” absentee voting, a change in date may have little impact on voter turnout. Federal legislation has been introduced which includes this measure.

Q5) During the terms of your two predecessors as SOS, the Business Services section was not well-regarded by business attorneys. What changes have you made that improved the perations of the Business Services section?

A5) Numerous changes have been made in the Business Services section since the beginning of Secretary Brunner’s administration. Some of the most notable include bringing the Client Services Center into the Columbus-based office which has significantly reduced the processing time for all business filings, the opening of a Cleveland Regional Office which in-part offers business filings, and a relinquishing of a dependence on outside vendors for items now handled in-house.

Q6) Database on Quality of Life: Will it show by area or county or city and compare with other states or nationally?

A6) The Quality of Life database has indicators by the state and county level. The website is interactive, in that you will be able to examine the indicators by maps, charts and graphs, and spreadsheet formats. At this time, we do not have reliable indicators for all cities across Ohio, but at the release of Census 2010, Ohio Secretary of State will be able to integrate city and metropolitan information to the website. Further, we have not integrated national or other state indicators in the database.

Q7) How do you guard against college students voting in the campus city and at home?

A7) When we receive questions from college or university administrators or students about where they can or cannot register, we always point out that students may choose their residence for voter registration based upon their current school address or a previous address (most typically with parents or guardians), but not both.

County Boards of Elections communicate with one another to determine when an Ohio voter has moved and changed a residence address for voting purposes, regardless of the reason for that change of address. Any attempt by any Ohio voter to maintain a registration at two different locations in Ohio and vote in both those locations could potentially open up that voter to penalties associated with any pending charges. Our office takes any attempted voter registration or voter fraud very seriously, regardless of student or non-student status.

We make every attempt to inform Ohio voters of the rules around voter registration and participation so that any irregularities, whether intentional or not, may be avoided.

Q8) What is the case against Election Day registration? Why don’t all states have it?

A8) Some of the arguments against Election Day Registration in the United States include an increased possibility of voter fraud, a cost burden on local elections officials to hire additional workers on Election Day to accommodate extra paperwork, and the possibility of longer lines due to voter registration at polling locations. These arguments also each make the case that any of these possible circumstances could decrease voters’ trust of the integrity of election systems.

Some states, such as Minnesota, have Election Day Registration. Most states do not. The decision for each state rests with changing state election law and therefore takes action on the part of a state legislature to change such laws. Currently there is no federal mandate for all states to have Election Day Registration.

Q9) I heard early voting people did not need to show photo I.D. If that was the case, why?

A9) Under Ohio law, no one is required to provide photo identification in order to vote. However, everyone must provide some form of identification in order to have his or her ballot counted. The General Assembly enacted into law the rules governing what kind of identification must be provided when voting in person or absentee.

An elector who chooses to vote at the polls on Election Day, must prove his or her identity by providing any one of the following: his or her current and valid Ohio driver's license; his or her current and valid photo identification card issued by the State of Ohio or the United States government; his or her military identification; an original or copy of a current utility bill; an original or copy of a current bank statement; an original or copy of a current paycheck; an original or copy of a current government check; or an original or copy of some other current government document. Poll workers are required to accept any of the above forms of identification under section 3505.18 of the Ohio Revised Code.

An elector who chooses to vote absentee, either by mail or in-person, must prove his or her identity by providing any one of the following: his or her Ohio driver's license number; the last four digits of his or her Social Security number; a copy of his or her current and valid Ohio driver's license; a copy of his or her photo identification card issued by the State of Ohio or the United States government; a copy of his or her a military identification; an original or copy of a current utility bill; an original or copy of a current bank statement; an original or copy of a current paycheck; an original or copy of a current government check; or an original or copy of some other current government document. County Boards of Elections are required to accept any of the above forms of identification under section 3509.03 of the Ohio Revised Code.

Q10) 81% of provisional ballots [were] validated. What were reasons remaining 19% were
rejected?

A10) Some of the reasons that provisional ballots were rejected in the 2008 general election include a voter not being registered to vote as required by Ohio law, an otherwise eligible elector casting a ballot in the wrong polling precinct, and failure to provide acceptable identification during the voting process.

Meet

Governor Ted Strickland

and

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

this Friday at a rally for education reform in Ohio.

Friday, May 8th at 11:45 AM

The West Lawn of the Schottenstein Center

The Ohio State University

555 Borror Rd

Columbus, OH 43210 [directions]

Please RSV here.

By Dan Balz
WashingtonPost.com
Posted at 6:34 PM ET on Apr 30, 2009

A new study by the Pew Research Center found that participation rates among African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans all rose between 2004 and 2008, leaving the share of the electorate accounted for by white voters at an all-time low of 76.3 percent.

African American women voted at higher participation rates than any other racial or ethnic group, according to the study, which was based on an analysis of Census data. The study found that 68.8 percent of eligible black women voted in the last election, an increase of 5.1 percentage points.

White women were the next highest in participation rates, followed by white men, black men, Latino women and Latino men. Asian American men and women voted ranked at the bottom in terms of participation rates.

Conservative op-ed columnist David Brooks reviewed Obama's speech:

America once had a responsible economic culture, Obama argued. People used to save their pennies to buy their dream houses. Banks used to lend by “traditional standards.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used to stick to their “traditional mandate.” Companies like A.I.G. used to limit themselves to the “traditional insurance business.”

But these traditions broke down, Obama continued. They were swamped by irresponsibility. Businesspeople chased “short-term profits” over long-term investments. Smart people spent more time manipulating numbers and symbols than actually making things. Americans consumed too much and saved too little. America became corrupted by “excessive debt,” “reckless speculation” and “fleeting profits.”

Obama vowed to end this irresponsibility and the cycle of boom and bust. It’s time to get back to basics, he said. He embraced tradition, order and authority. He quoted the New Testament and argued that it is time that the U.S. built its economic house on rock and not sand.

If Republicans aren’t nervous, they should be. Obama is arguing for his activist agenda not on the basis of class-consciousness, which is alien to America, but as a defense of middle-class morality, which is central to it. Obama is positioning the Democrats as the party of order, responsibility and small-town values. If he pulls this mantle away from the Republicans, it would be the greatest train robbery in American politics.