Obama

[Soldier4Christ]

Impeaching him at theis point is most likely not an option but he most certainly can be put into jail for breaking the law.

[Shammu]

TV ad features Obama mocking Bible
Candidate's 'Fight the Smears' site tries to bury video documentation
Posted: October 10, 2008
11:30 pm Eastern

By Drew Zahn
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A television commercial showing clips of Sen. Barack Obama mocking the Bible has prompted backlash from the candidate's "Fight the Smears" website, which falsely accuses the ad's creator of trying to scam Christians out of their money by promising to air a spot that will never be broadcast.

Under the heading "Scamming the faithful," Obama's official website says of the man who made the commercial, "The trickster's claims about Barack's faith are every bit as false as his claims that this amateurish video is really a TV ad."

WND has confirmed, however, that – true to his word – the ad's creator purchased air time for the commercial on television stations in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Sources at WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh and a cable company servicing Erie told WND that the ad had been aired on several occasions.

Nonetheless, in an Oct. 3 update to "Scamming the Faithful," the Obama website maintains its attack of the commercial's creator, Stephen Marks of the organization pH for America.

"Nothing has changed here," reads the Oct. 3 update, "The scammer is still untrustworthy. … Making scams seem plausible is what tricksters like him are known for. In the end, he's even less credible now than he was when he first started taking people's money."

"It is ironic indeed," responded Marks in a statement, "that this so-called 'Fight the Smears' website (is) not fighting smears but creating them."

Marks insists that every dollar he has raised through his website and the appeal for support at the end of the ad "has gone to pay for the media buys and minimal production costs." Marks also claims that that pH for America purchased a television as a gift for the Obama campaign "so they can watch the TV and see the ads airing for themselves."

Made into both a one-minute and two-minute commercial format, the shorter of the two advertisements can be seen here:

Marks told WND, "If this ad is seen by all the swing voters in all the key swing states, it would not only anger anyone who reads the Bible, but will make anyone who sees the ad re-think the Jeremiah Wright fiasco as well as Obama's remarks in April that 'small town America' is so bitter that they have to 'cling to their guns and religion.'

"Most Americans have thus far given Obama a pass on those two issues, but after seeing our ad, it will make many, if not most folks think, 'Now I finally understand why Obama would belong to such a radical church,' and 'Now I finally understand Obama's true contempt for people of faith regarding his 'cling to their guns and religion' remark," Marks said.

Obama's website claims that Marks deliberately edited clips of the candidate to make Obama look bad and that the commercials don't reflect the nature of the speech from which they were taken.

"With such a deceptive person behind this video, it's not surprising that everything he says about Barack is deeply dishonest and wrong, too," says the "Fight the Smears" website. "The video takes 5 sentences out of a 4,500-word speech Barack gave in 2006 completely out of context to stoke division and hatred."

The commercial features edited clips from a speech Sen. Obama made before a conference in Washington, D.C.,  June 28, 2006. The entire transcript of the speech can be seen here, but the immediate context is as follows:

    Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

    And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our Bibles. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles.

The group pH for America is a 527 organization – so named for the IRS designation for such groups – created by Marks, a Republican political consultant who also created advertisements criticizing 2004 Democrat candidate John Kerry. The group's website boasts it "is hoping to become the 'Swiftboat' 527 organization of 2008," referencing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a 527 organization that created commercials widely credited with contributing to Kerry's defeat.

Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of Campaign Media Analysis Group, told CNN the appeal for money at the end of the pH for America advertisement, rather than an indication of "scamming" or "tricking" people, is common for 527 organizations trying to impress donors.

"Even though an ad buy might be small now, remember, these groups are auditioning right now for late donations to take these ads to a larger scope," Tracey said. "Remember, the Swift Boat original ad buy was less than $1 million and ran in only a handful of small media markets."

Marks echoed that strategy in a release announcing the successful purchase of air time for his group's commercial.

"Unlike other 527 groups who are funded by millionaires, ours has been funded by grass-roots blue-collar voters offended by the side of Barack Obama they see in our ad," Marks said. "We hope that as more folks see the ad, that we will eventually get help from more affluent contributors."

[Soldier4Christ]

Prosecutor Fitzgerald Could Send Obama To Jail

The Sun Times today gave a major clue that Barack Obama will indeed go down with Tony Rezko, sooner rather than later. It looks as though Rezko is about to turn on Alexi Giannoulias, the 30-year old State Treasurer of Illinois (who was elected only because Obama backed him).

Here’s where all the clues are…and then we’ll walk you through the local Chicago politics on how today’s hint by the Sun Times has us convinced, for the first time ever, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could indeed send Barack Obama to jail.
We need to repeat that: we never believed, until now, that Obama would go to jail for anything related to Rezko. Today, this breaking news about what Rezko is singing to the Feds about makes us reconsider all of that.
Barack Obama will serve a prison sentence in the next few years — because knowing Fitzgerald, there is no reason he would be going through all of this if that was not the targeted goal in the long term.

(1) Michael Sneed in her Sun Times column 10/10/08 had the following tidbit:
Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.

(2) We just spoke with someone well-connected in Chicago politics who told us that the bank Sneed is talking about has to be Broadway Bank, which is owned by the politically-connected Giannoulias family. We were told that Sneed’s column confirms rumblings people we know heard independently that Tony Rezko is giving up the Giannoulias family to Patrick Fitzgerald — Rezko and the Giannoulias family are as close and tied together as anyone in Chicago could be. If Rezko is turning on them, then Rezko is going to give up Governor Rod Blagojevich and Obama too.
We don’t want to end up in cement shoes for implying anything here, but if you live in Chicago for any length of time, you hear rumors about Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias family, and insert Tony Soprano references here. Kapeech?

(3) So, Rezko is singing about the Giannoulias family and its longtime “business dealings” in Chicago, which would interest someone like Fitzgerald and the Justice Department, who have had a long ambition to crack Soprano-style business dealings in Chicago (the city known for Al Capone hasn’t changed much, really). The next plate to drop in this will be Fitzgerald then leaning on the Giannoulias family to give up someone bigger than them, who Fitzgerald once discussed in terms of hoping “he has the morals to do the right thing”, to paraphrase. We now believe that person Fitz was talking about is Barack Obama.

(4) The Giannoulias family was involved with Obama as far back as his first state senate campaign in 1996. It has been long rumored here in Chicago that Obama obtained a sweetheart deal on his first town home here in Chicago — which he could not have afforded otherwise — and guess who the financing came from for that house? We’ve been told it was Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias bank. Now, this sets up a scenario where the Giannoulias family helps Obama with his campaign finances and gets him deeper in their pocket with his sweetheart mortgage deal (for the first home he owned that he could not afford) – all in exchange for quid pro quo to be determined later.

(5) One favor political Chicago claims Obama did for the Giannoulias family was in 2006 when, out of the blue, 29 year old Alexi Giannoulias, with no experience, and without ever having voted before, decides to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Also out of the blue, Barack Obama endorses Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer. This was a SHOCK to everyone in Chicago — and Giannoulias would have never become State Treasurer without Obama’s help. In political circles here, it has always been believed that this endorsement was bought years ago with that sweetheart mortgage deal Broadway Bank arranged for Obama to buy his town house.

(6) So, the Tony Rezko sweetheart deal was not the first magic home loan Obama ever received to buy a house he could not afford.
There’s more to this that looks like it will break soon. We were STUNNED when we read Sneed’s column because we never in a million years believed Fitz would actually be able to take down Obama.
We do not believe this will come out before the election, however, but we do believe Fitzgerald will continue his prosecution to the highest level, because that is what he does. Jean Valjean got off easy, compared to what it’s like to be in the crosshairs of perhaps the greatest prosecutor this nation has had in a generation. Patrick Fitzgerald is a force of nature.

Sneed’s clue can only mean Broadway Bank…we’ve now heard this from several people in Chicago. And Broadway Bank can only mean Giannoulias. And Giannoulias leads to Obama through that town house home loan and the quid pro quo political endorsement several years later. And that home loan ties back to Rezko, in that it was the first of two shady home buys Obama made with quid pro quos attached to them.

Just thinking that last paragraph out, Obama’s defense in the Rezko business was that he never did anything for Rezko so there was no quid pro quo. What the Giannoulias and Broadway Bank stuff proves is that Obama sits in people’s pockets for a while before the favor is given. He bought that town house sometime between 1997-2000 or so, since he lived there for a few years before trading up to the Obama Mansion with Rezko’s help in 2005, after he was in the United States Senate. And it looks like the payback was not given to the Giannoulias family until 2006, with Obama’s endorsement of Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer.

This all stems from Sneed’s clue in today’s Sun Times. She says to stay tuned for more, so please do that.

[Soldier4Christ]

We can only hope and pray.

[HisDaughter]

We can only hope and pray.

It would make the wait worth it to see Obama hauled off in cuffs on national tv.  Since I don't have a tv though I would by the DVD just to watch it over and over!
And then of course all the dancing in the streets!

[Soldier4Christ]

And then of course all the dancing in the streets!

Right next to those that will riot in protest against his arrest.

[nChrist]

Prosecutor Fitzgerald Could Send Obama To Jail

The Sun Times today gave a major clue that Barack Obama will indeed go down with Tony Rezko, sooner rather than later. It looks as though Rezko is about to turn on Alexi Giannoulias, the 30-year old State Treasurer of Illinois (who was elected only because Obama backed him).

Here’s where all the clues are…and then we’ll walk you through the local Chicago politics on how today’s hint by the Sun Times has us convinced, for the first time ever, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could indeed send Barack Obama to jail.
We need to repeat that: we never believed, until now, that Obama would go to jail for anything related to Rezko. Today, this breaking news about what Rezko is singing to the Feds about makes us reconsider all of that.
Barack Obama will serve a prison sentence in the next few years — because knowing Fitzgerald, there is no reason he would be going through all of this if that was not the targeted goal in the long term.

(1) Michael Sneed in her Sun Times column 10/10/08 had the following tidbit:
Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.

(2) We just spoke with someone well-connected in Chicago politics who told us that the bank Sneed is talking about has to be Broadway Bank, which is owned by the politically-connected Giannoulias family. We were told that Sneed’s column confirms rumblings people we know heard independently that Tony Rezko is giving up the Giannoulias family to Patrick Fitzgerald — Rezko and the Giannoulias family are as close and tied together as anyone in Chicago could be. If Rezko is turning on them, then Rezko is going to give up Governor Rod Blagojevich and Obama too.
We don’t want to end up in cement shoes for implying anything here, but if you live in Chicago for any length of time, you hear rumors about Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias family, and insert Tony Soprano references here. Kapeech?

(3) So, Rezko is singing about the Giannoulias family and its longtime “business dealings” in Chicago, which would interest someone like Fitzgerald and the Justice Department, who have had a long ambition to crack Soprano-style business dealings in Chicago (the city known for Al Capone hasn’t changed much, really). The next plate to drop in this will be Fitzgerald then leaning on the Giannoulias family to give up someone bigger than them, who Fitzgerald once discussed in terms of hoping “he has the morals to do the right thing”, to paraphrase. We now believe that person Fitz was talking about is Barack Obama.

(4) The Giannoulias family was involved with Obama as far back as his first state senate campaign in 1996. It has been long rumored here in Chicago that Obama obtained a sweetheart deal on his first town home here in Chicago — which he could not have afforded otherwise — and guess who the financing came from for that house? We’ve been told it was Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias bank. Now, this sets up a scenario where the Giannoulias family helps Obama with his campaign finances and gets him deeper in their pocket with his sweetheart mortgage deal (for the first home he owned that he could not afford) – all in exchange for quid pro quo to be determined later.

(5) One favor political Chicago claims Obama did for the Giannoulias family was in 2006 when, out of the blue, 29 year old Alexi Giannoulias, with no experience, and without ever having voted before, decides to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Also out of the blue, Barack Obama endorses Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer. This was a SHOCK to everyone in Chicago — and Giannoulias would have never become State Treasurer without Obama’s help. In political circles here, it has always been believed that this endorsement was bought years ago with that sweetheart mortgage deal Broadway Bank arranged for Obama to buy his town house.

(6) So, the Tony Rezko sweetheart deal was not the first magic home loan Obama ever received to buy a house he could not afford.
There’s more to this that looks like it will break soon. We were STUNNED when we read Sneed’s column because we never in a million years believed Fitz would actually be able to take down Obama.
We do not believe this will come out before the election, however, but we do believe Fitzgerald will continue his prosecution to the highest level, because that is what he does. Jean Valjean got off easy, compared to what it’s like to be in the crosshairs of perhaps the greatest prosecutor this nation has had in a generation. Patrick Fitzgerald is a force of nature.

Sneed’s clue can only mean Broadway Bank…we’ve now heard this from several people in Chicago. And Broadway Bank can only mean Giannoulias. And Giannoulias leads to Obama through that town house home loan and the quid pro quo political endorsement several years later. And that home loan ties back to Rezko, in that it was the first of two shady home buys Obama made with quid pro quos attached to them.

Just thinking that last paragraph out, Obama’s defense in the Rezko business was that he never did anything for Rezko so there was no quid pro quo. What the Giannoulias and Broadway Bank stuff proves is that Obama sits in people’s pockets for a while before the favor is given. He bought that town house sometime between 1997-2000 or so, since he lived there for a few years before trading up to the Obama Mansion with Rezko’s help in 2005, after he was in the United States Senate. And it looks like the payback was not given to the Giannoulias family until 2006, with Obama’s endorsement of Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer.

This all stems from Sneed’s clue in today’s Sun Times. She says to stay tuned for more, so please do that.

WOW!

YEAH!

HOW MUCH MORE IS THERE?

[Shammu]

7-YR.-OLD GETS AN ACORN VOTE
CONN. JOB TO BOOST OBAMA
By GINGER ADAMS OTIS and SUSAN EDELMAN in New York and MELISSA KLEIN in Bridgeport, Conn.
October 12, 2008

O'jahnae Smith is ready and registered to vote this November.

There's only one problem: She's 7 years old.

The Connecticut girl is 11 years too young - and nobody in her family knows how she ended up on a voter registration form submitted by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"She's registered to vote?" said a surprised Jerome Smith, O'jahnae's teenage brother. "She's too young to vote."

But that didn't stop someone from forging the child's signature on a voter registration card and giving her a fake birth date that upped her age to 27. The family told The Post a drug-addicted relative may have given the bogus card to ACORN.

Voter registration fraud complaints like these continue to mount for the group, already under scrutiny in 11 states where hundreds, if not thousands, of new registrations are being questioned.

ACORN volunteers have been found to register dead people and even put members of the Dallas Cowboys on Nevada lists.

The community organizing group has a long history of flooding low- and middle-income neighborhoods in election years with temporary workers instructed to register 20 to 25 voters per day - or risk getting fired.

Most states prohibit paying per signature, but ACORN workers earning $8 to $9 an hour still have to hit their quotas. And many need the money - including some ex-cons in work-release programs.

ACORN's controversial tactics have fueled John McCain's criticism of Barack Obama, whose campaign paid an ACORN spinoff - Community Services Inc. - about $800,000 to knock on doors and urge people to vote for Obama in four key primary states: Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

In his pre-politics days, Obama ran the Illinois chapter of Project Vote in 1992, before it hooked up with ACORN.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis on Friday called for a freeze on taxpayer dollars to ACORN until recent allegations have been investigated.

Meanwhile, state authorities in New Mexico, Indiana, Missouri, Connecticut, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada have launched probes of bogus voter registration forms filed by ACORN.

Roberta Casteel, a nurse, is one of several dozen Nevada voters caught in the web of fake ACORN registrations. Casteel, a registered voter since 1991, was shocked to receive a letter rejecting a voter application she didn't know she'd made.

Authorities said they'd received two voter applications in her name: one as a Democrat and one as an independent. Both cards had her address, date of birth and Social Security number, and were submitted by ACORN workers. Neither signature matched her original one on file.

A former ACORN worker in Pennsylvania has already been charged with 17 counts of identity theft and forgery.

Other states are sifting through cartons of suspicious forms.

The ACORN shenanigans likely won't rise to actual voting fraud, stressed election law expert Terri Enns at Ohio State University.

"ACORN's problematic registrations create extra work for election boards, because they have to check them, but it's not double voting," she said.

7-YR.-OLD GETS AN ACORN VOTE

[Soldier4Christ]

WOW!

YEAH!

HOW MUCH MORE IS THERE?

I sure don't know but I am hoping for a lot more to come out of this that will be enough to make people wake up to the truth before it is too late.

[Soldier4Christ]

Obama website lies
about ACORN ties
Campaign tries to distance senator
from group convicted of voter fraud

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is misleading the public regarding the presidential candidate's ties to a radical leftist organization that has admitted to major financial improprieties and has been convicted in numerous, massive voter fraud scandals.

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign on Friday stepped up its efforts to draw attention to Obama's alleged relationship with ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, holding a conference call in which McCain spokesman Rick Davis accused Obama of making "very inconsistent remarks about what his relationship with this organization is."

In response to the increased focus on ACORN, the Obama campaign last week claimed on its "Fight the Smears" website the presidential candidate was "never an ACORN community organizer; ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee; ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992."

But these blanket statements are false and misleading.

In 1992, Obama was director of Project Vote in Chicago, which helped register 150,000 voters on the city's South Side. Obama's successful work was credited in multiple media reports with helping to elect Democratic Senator Carol Moseley Braun.

Obama's campaign claims ACORN was "not part of" Project Vote, but the organization's incorporation papers, obtained by WND, show Project Vote is a trademark name whose parent company is registered at the same New Orleans address in which ACORN and multiple ACORN affiliates are housed.

Obama himself previously connected Project Vote to ACORN.

"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drives in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work," Obama was quoted on his own campaign website as saying at an ACORN meeting, according to a post by official Obama website blogger Sam Graham-Felsen.

Clarifying the role of ACORN in Project Vote, Obama Spokesman Ben LaBolt told the New York Times this weekend Project Vote and ACORN were not as intertwined in 1992 as they are today, when a significant part of Project Vote’s revenues flow to ACORN and various of its affiliates as payment for services.

But LaBolt's statement, which admits Project Vote and ACORN was intertwined on some level while Obama was director directly contradicts the Obama campaign's "Fact Check" claim that ACORN was "not part" of Project Vote.

In a misleading statement, Obama's site claims "ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee," but it fails to mention Obama was an unpaid ACORN trainer, as WND first reported in August.

Lewis Goldberg, a spokesman for ACORN, confirmed Obama conducted two hour-long leadership training sessions for his organization in the late 1990's and said Obama was not paid for the work.

Obama has deep ties to ACORN, including with Ayers

Although Obama has been downplaying his relationship with ACORN, the presidential candidate has deep-seated ties to the radical group.

ACORN is very active in Obama's native Chicago, where in 1997, some 200 members attempted to storm a City Hall meeting, resulting in six members being arrested, including Madeleine Talbot, ACORN's Chicago director.

In the early 1990's Talbot invited Obama to help train ACORN activists.

Obama and other Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit on behalf of ACORN, forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal "motor-voter" bill.

While Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit, it channeled millions of dollars to ACORN and affiliated groups.

Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000.

He served on the Fund alongside William C. Ayers, an unrepentant member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.

Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns.

In the Social Policy Journal, Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN leader, documents what he terms Obama's "long service" with ACORN, which he said led many of the organization's members to help in voter campaigns for Obama's early Chicago campaigns.

Foulkes said Obama and ACORN were "old friends."

As a state senator, Obama touted many of ACORN's lines.

National Review Online writer Stanley Kurtz, who conducted a thorough review of ACORN, wrote, "Sure enough, a bit of digging into Obama's years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn's signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices."

ACORN endorsed Obama's presidential campaign, an endorsement touted on Obama's official website.

"What it came down to was that Senator Obama is the candidate who best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about like stopping foreclosures, enacting fair and comprehensive immigration reform, and building stronger and safer communities across America," said ACORN's Maude Hurd of the group's Obama endorsement.

Campaign pays ACORN affiliate

WND reported in August Obama's campaign paid more than $800,000 in services to Citizen Services Inc. (CSI), a nonprofit organization that is an offshoot of ACORN.

According to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by the Tribune-Review, the Obama campaign paid CSI $832,598.29, from Feb. 25 to May 17, including $564,342.21 for "stage, lighting and sound." The payments stood out since CSI does not offer services for stage, lighting or sound.

The Obama campaign amended the FEC reports in August and September to claim the payments to CSI were for get-out-the-vote efforts.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

McCain spokesman Davis charged the original FEC filing was an effort to "hide the fact" money was paid to ACORN, while FEC officials told the media amended filings are common in major campaigns, including fort large sums of money.

'ACORN may skew PA vote,' election integrity in doubt across country

Last Friday former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Newman, a Republican, said at a news conference she has no confidence in the integrity of the electoral process in Pennsylvania as a result of what she termed the extensive voter registration effort by ACORN.

"[There is] potential of massive voter fraud. ...I am not confident we can get a fair election" on Nov. 4, said Newman, who retired from the court in 2006.

Gleason announced ACORN and other groups had submitted 252,595 voter registrations in Philadelphia, of which 57,435 were rejected, most of them submitted by ACORN. She said the registrations had faulty Social Security numbers, incorrect dates of birth, "clearly fraudulent" signatures, addresses that did not exist and duplicate registrations.

Other key areas in PA had similar problems, Newman said.

A CBS news investigation showed similar problems across the nation.

The news organization said it talked to nearly two dozen ACORN workers who all said they were pressured to increase their number of registration cards to the point of copying names out of phone books, signing up inmates, and registering the dead.

"Whether simple error or outright fraud, the charges surrounding ACORN are already raising doubts about the integrity of the upcoming election in key parts of the country," the CBS investigation concluded.

Group promoting Obama has history of major voter fraud

Last July, ACORN settled what was described by the Washington Secretary of State as the "largest case of voter fraud in the state's history." Government prosecutors had filed felony charges against seven ACORN workers, who ended up receiving jail time.

Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Stephen Hobbs said in the case the workers had admitted filling out registration forms with names they found in phone books. The ACORN canvassers filled out the forms while sitting around a table at the downtown Seattle Public Library, Hobbs said.

ACORN was also investigated in 2006 for submitting false voter registrations in St. Louis. Nearly 1,500 fraudulent voter registrations were identified in the case, which was tied to at least one campaign, that of Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Four ACORN workers were indicted in the case.

Also in 2006, four part-time ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City, Mo., for voter-registration fraud after being caught, fired and turned in by ACORN.

In January 2005, two Colorado ACORN workers were sentenced to community service for submitting false voter registrations.

In Ohio in 2004, four ACORN employees were indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter-registration forms.

ACORN has been accused in multiple other voter fraud cases in other states. Some investigations are still pending.

ACORN has been accused of financial improprieties.

The New York Times last month quoted ACORN officials admitting Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000. A small group of executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group's board members and not to alert law enforcement, the Times reported.

ACORN is organized into more than 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the United States, as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico and Peru. The organization was born out of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.

ACORN strongly lobbies for gun control, leftist education policies, and the regulation of banks, targeting the lending practices of major financial institutions it sees as "predatory." It has a strong anti-capitalism agenda.

National Review Online writer Kurtz wrote the organization's primary goals are "municipal 'living wage' laws targeting 'big-box' stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks – efforts styled as combating 'predatory lending.'"

Sol Stern of the City Journal, who also wrote an extensive piece on ACORN, stated the group's "radical agenda" occasionally broke through to "undisguised authoritarian socialism."

He wrote ACORN works to drive big businesses out of cities and force companies that want to move to obtain "exit visas."

Intrusive, radical protest tactics

ACORN protests have turned violent, at times as soon as the rallies began. Some protests disrupted Federal Reserve hearings and busted into closed city council meetings.

Stern noted that in 2003 Baltimore ACORN underlings piled garbage in front of City Hall to protest lack of services in poor neighborhoods, wielded huge inflated rubber sharks to disrupt a bankers' dinner, and even staged a profanity-laced protest in front of the home of the city's mayor, Martin O'Malley.

"They unloaded a busload of people shouting pretty ugly things and scared the daylights out of my wife and kids," O'Malley told the Baltimore Sun. "I thought it was a pretty cruddy thing to do."

[Soldier4Christ]

30,000 convicted felons remain on Florida voter rolls
Official admits state is too swamped to stop ineligible from casting ballots

More than 30,000 Florida felons who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this presidential battleground state, a Sun Sentinel investigation has found.

Many are faithful voters, with at least 4,900 turning out in past elections.

Another 5,600 are not likely to vote Nov. 4 — they're still in prison.

Of the felons who registered with a party, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

Florida's elections chief, Secretary of State Kurt Browning, acknowledged his staff has failed to remove thousands of ineligible felons because of a shortage of workers and a crush of new registrations in this critical swing state.

Browning said he was not surprised by the newspaper's findings. "I'm kind of shocked that the number is as low as it is," he said.

Asked how many ineligible felons may be on Florida's rolls, Browning said, "We don't know."

The Division of Elections has a backlog of more than 108,000 possible felons who have registered to vote since January 2006 that it hasn't had the time or staff to verify. Browning estimated that about 10 percent, once checked, would be ineligible.

"This is part of a big mess," said Jeff Manza, professor of sociology at New York University and author of a book on felon voting. "It's almost certain there will be challenges if the election is close enough that things hinge on this. Both parties are armed to the teeth with legal talent in all the battleground states."

Florida's felon ban originated before the Civil War, and today the state remains one of 10 that restrict some felons from voting even after they've served their time. The law requires state and county elections officials to remove felons from voter rolls after conviction and add them only when they've won clemency to restore their voting rights.

In 2007, the state eased the restrictions by granting automatic clemency to most nonviolent offenders who have completed their sentences. Others, including people convicted of federal offenses, multiple felonies or crimes such as drug trafficking, murder and sex charges, must still apply for clemency and have their cases reviewed.

The felons the Sun Sentinel identified never received clemency, but their names remain on Florida's voter rolls. Some are well-known: ex-Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne and ex-Palm Beach County Commissioner Tony Masilotti, for instance, both convicted last year of public corruption.

Browning said the state painstakingly checks all voters before removing them to avoid inadvertently taking off eligible voters as happened in two previous large-scale purge attempts.

"The policy of this department, this state, is that we will err on the side of the voter," he said.

Florida registers voters largely on an honor system, asking applicants to affirm on a signed form that they are not convicted felons or that their rights have been restored. State law requires the Elections Division to conduct criminal records checks only after voters are added to the rolls, and it takes months or even years to remove those who are ineligible, the Sun Sentinel found.

"It's scandalous, really," said Lance deHaven-Smith, professor of public policy at Florida State University. "Why do they have to cull the rolls after they get registered? They shouldn't get on the rolls in the first place."

Felons confused
Several felon voters interviewed by the Sun Sentinel expressed confusion over automatic clemency and said they thought their voting rights had been restored. Some said they merely signed registration forms that were filled out by volunteers.

"If I wasn't able to vote, they wouldn't have given me my [voter registration] card," said John A. Henderson, 55, a Hallandale Beach Democrat. "I voted the last time and the times before that."

Henderson served about a year in prison in the late 1990s for battery and trafficking in cocaine. He said he was unaware he needed to formally apply to restore his rights when he successfully registered to vote in 2002. Henderson has since cast ballots in at least six elections and received three updated voter ID cards from the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office, records show.

Broward elections officials were unaware of Henderson's criminal record and did not check it when he registered, said county elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney. Nonetheless, she said he will remain on the rolls "until we are directed otherwise to remove him."

Maintaining accurate voting rolls is up to the state Division of Elections, which has failed to effectively remove felons for years.

Most recently, in 2006, the Auditor General recommended the division conduct a "comprehensive check" of all registered voters against lists of convicted felons, a step the state still has not taken, Browning acknowledged.

In response to auditors, the division said running the search "would not be a problem," but it lacked the manpower to verify possible matches. "Staff further stated that they were busy full-time" checking newly registered felons.

Once voters are added to the rolls, the state's procedure for removing them is tedious and labor-intensive. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement runs daily checks of criminal records against new voters and those who have made changes to their registrations, sending possible matches to the Elections Division.

Elections staff then manually check each one, a process that involves three to five workers reviewing records, comparing driver's license and prison photos and verifying convictions. Confirmed matches are sent to the counties for removal.

Since January 2006, more than 1.6 million new voters have registered in Florida. FDLE identified more than 124,000 possible felons.

In that time, elections workers removed about 7,200 from voter rolls statewide. Broward County took off just 232 and Palm Beach County 31.

"We do want to make sure ... that we have the right voter," Browning said.

Elections workers are now reviewing more than 3,800 possible felon voters but have more than 108,000 others still to be checked. "We've not touched those records yet," Browning said.

Asked how long it will take to review them all, he said, "I don't have a clue. I really don't."

Recently registered
John Teate, who lives west of Boca Raton, remains on the voter rolls after registering as a Democrat in July despite felony drug and theft convictions dating to the early 1990s. He said someone he thinks was a Democratic supporter signed him up while he waited for a bus at the central terminal in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

"I said, 'I'm a convicted felon. I can't vote,'" recalled Teate, 45. "I figured when the paperwork came in, there would be a red flag."

A spokesman for Barack Obama's campaign said it is unlikely his volunteers signed up Teate because his name is not in a database of new voters they registered.

Teate hasn't voted and said he doesn't plan to.

It's a third-degree felony for ineligible voters to knowingly cast ballots and for campaign workers and voters to submit false registration forms. Prosecutors and elections officials in South Florida could not recall any prosecutions related to felons registering or voting in recent years.

Henderson, the Hallandale Beach voter, said he does not think his criminal record should keep him from voting.

"I paid my debt," Henderson said. "Just because I was incarcerated, that means I'm nothing now? I'm still a father. I got two kids I'm raising."

Evan Snow, a West Palm Beach Republican, agrees. Convicted of burglary, battery and other crimes dating to the 1980s, Snow said he sought clemency several years ago but was discouraged by the lengthy process and gave up.

Snow, 46, registered to vote in June. He said he plans to cast a ballot Nov. 4 but hasn't decided which presidential candidate to support.

"Everybody is getting interested in politics right now," he said. "We are all here together. Shouldn't we all be able to make a decision about who runs the place?"

To civil rights advocates, the troubled system is an argument to change the state's constitution to automatically restore voting rights to all felons who complete their sentences.

As of mid-September, about 118,000 mostly nonviolent offenders had received automatic clemency under the 2007 change. For more than 9,700 of them, it didn't matter — their names had never been removed from the voter rolls.

[HisDaughter]

I thought of using several quotes here from the past few articles but there is too much, so let me just say that I don't know how we can get a fair vote at all this year.  I have never seen so much scandal in my life!
Did anyone watch Hannity last night?  He was supposed to do some kind of special documentary or something on Obama.  Of course I was working and my mom missed my email about taping it for me.  Do you know if they plan to repeat it?  When?

[Soldier4Christ]

Are you talking about the "Corsi's 'The Obama Nation' Revisited" that played yesterday? I don't know if they plan to repeat it again but you can get what they call a "quick transcript" of the Corsi interview here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,403043,00.html

There is also a video there.

[Soldier4Christ]

Obama believes women should register for draft
Also would consider officially opening combat positions to females

Even as the U.S. confronts two long wars, neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama believes the country should take the politically perilous step of reviving the military draft.

But the two presidential candidates disagree on a key foundation of any future draft: Mr. Obama supports a requirement for both men and women to register with the Selective Service, while Mr. McCain doesn't think women should have to register.

Also, Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not.

"Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should be updated to reflect realities on the ground," said Wendy Morigi, Mr. Obama's national security spokeswoman. "Barack Obama would consult with military commanders to review the constraints that remain."

According to his campaign, Mr. McCain supports the current Department of Defense restrictions on women in combat units, including armor, field artillery and special forces.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter revived the Selective Service system, which compiles a list of nearly all men in the U.S. between 18 and 25 in case a crisis forces the government to undertake a massive expansion of the military.

Both Congress and the Supreme Court have exempted women from registration because of the combat rules.

For years, that position has rankled some women's rights groups and men who face penalties for not registering -- including loss of employment with the federal government -- at a time when female soldiers regularly find themselves in dangerous situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, both conflicts without defined battlefields.

Mr. McCain, a decorated former Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, speaks often of how his military service has helped prepare him for the role of commander in chief and how his time as a captive in Hanoi reinforced his love of country.

Yet he doesn't want to see a return to mandatory service, for men or women, according to his presidential campaign.

"Sen. McCain strongly believes that an all-volunteer force is preferable to a conscripted force," said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the campaign. "The tools available to recruiters have historically enabled the all-volunteer force to attract sufficient numbers of qualified recruits."

His views are echoed by many high-ranking officers in the military, who prefer a force of motivated volunteers. But some of the same officers have also expressed concerns about the strains of more than six years of sustained combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially if the U.S. commitment in both countries doesn't end in the near future.

Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that he will draw down the U.S. military presence in Iraq if he becomes president, but he has also said he would increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, where Taliban forces have seen a resurgence in recent years.

During a CNN/YouTube debate for Democratic presidential candidates last year, he said he doesn't "agree" with the draft.

But he did say women should be expected to register with the Selective Service, comparing the role of women to black soldiers and airmen who served during World War II, when the armed forces were still segregated.

"There was a time when African-Americans weren't allowed to serve in combat," Mr. Obama said. "And yet, when they did, not only did they perform brilliantly, but what also happened is they helped to change America, and they helped to underscore that we're equal.

"And I think that if women are registered for service -- not necessarily in combat roles, and I don't agree with the draft -- I think it will help to send a message to my two daughters that they've got obligations to this great country as well as boys do."

Elaine Donnelly, a former member of President Bill Clinton's Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, dismissed Mr. Obama's comparison of the roles of women and black soldiers, arguing that males and females, in general, aren't equal on the battlefield.

"There are differences between men and women where physical strength is an issue," said Ms. Donnelly, who heads the nonpartisan Center for Military Readiness. "There are a lot of civilian feminists who are making unreasonable demands on the military."

Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, argues that women should have a chance to compete for any position in the armed forces.

"I hope a new president will revisit the restrictions," she said.