Month: February 2005

Senators Clinton and Boxer, Representative Tubbs Jones And Others Unveil Major Election Reform Bill

The Count Every Vote Act of 2005 will provide a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting machines and ensures access to voter verification for all citizens, including language minority voters, illiterate voters and voters with disabilities. The bill mandates that this ballot be the official ballot for purposes of a recount. The bill sets a uniform standard for provisional ballots so that every qualified voter will know their votes are treated equally, and requires the Federal Election Assistance Commission to issue standards that ensure uniform access to voting machines and trained election personnel in every community. The bill also improves security measures for electronic voting machines.

To encourage more citizens to exercise their right to vote, the Count Every Vote Act designates Election Day a federal holiday and requires early voting in each state. The bill also enacts “no-excuse” absentee balloting, enacts fair and uniform voter registration and identification, and requires states to allow citizens to register to vote on Election Day. It also requires the Election Assistance Commission to work with states to reduce wait times for voters at polling places. In addition, the legislation restores voting rights for felons who have repaid their debt to society.

The Count Every Vote Act also includes measures to protect voters from deceptive practices and conflicts of interest that harm voter trust in the integrity of the system. In particular, the bill restricts the ability of chief state election officials as well as owners and senior managers of voting machine manufacturers to engage in certain kinds of political activity. The bill also makes it a federal crime to commit deceptive practices, such as sending flyers into minority neighborhoods telling voters the wrong voting date, and makes these practices a felony punishable by up to a year of imprisonment.

The commenters at Daily Kos seem pretty doubtful that this will pass out of the committee stage.

I’m not so pessimistic, if this gets reasonable coverage in the media I can’t see this not becoming law, what politician could survive voting against this bill and being seen to be in favour of not having every vote count.

If the US is to be a beacon of democracy throughout the world then first it must build itself a system that is above reproach and this is a step towards that.

Tags: politics

BBC News: Blair faces terror plans grilling

I don’t believe that the case has been made that these ‘control orders’ are at all necessary.

Tags: politics, terrorism

Noticed this Daily Express headline at the newsagents this morning.

Having had my scare-mongering detector set off I looked for a more reliable source of information but apparently even the BBC is at it.

BBC News: Election ‘could be terror target’

Terrorists might try to target the UK in the run-up to the election, London’s most senior police officer has said. Sir Ian Blair said terror groups would remember the effect of the Madrid bomb on Spain’s general election last year.

Other potential targets were the royal wedding and the UK’s presidency of the European Union and G8, he said. He refused to say if there was specific information about the risk of a pre-poll attack. No 10 was similarly cautious but said the threat was real.

‘Difficult issues’

The comments come after Tony Blair defended his controversial anti-terror proposals, warning that it would be wrong to wait for an attack before acting. Sir Ian told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority it would be “unwise” to speculate about whether there was specific information about risks of a pre-election attack.

But he said: “Terrorists have long memories. They understand what happened in Madrid and know what the impact of that was on the Spanish electorate. “This year we are responsible for the EU presidency, presidency of the G8, a royal wedding and a general election.

“There are obvious and enormous targets which we have to deal with.” Sir Ian said the debate over anti-terror plans was one for politicians, not the police, who would enforce any new powers.
More…

This ain’t news it is just speculation. There is no intelligence of any specific threat of terrorist attack, this is just yet more fear-mongering by the Government and the police.

Yes with such high-profile events happening in the UK this year the security services should be on heightened alert but it does not mean that the public should be fed this wild speculation. Call me cynical but I believe that this announcement is nothing more than another scare story to help justify the Government’s proposal to hold terror suspects without trial under house arrest indefinitely.

Tags: politics, security, terrorism

Many stories from the last few days have concerned the threat of terrorism to the UK and the Government’s response to the perceived threat.

Two days ago during a debate in the House of Commons about the Prevention of Terrorism Bill Brian Sedgemore Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch in his last speech in the house attacked the Government and his party’s backbenchers who have supported the government in their trampling of individual’s liberty.

In their defence, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary say that they are behaving tyrannically… because they are frightened, and that the rest of us would be frightened too if only we knew what they will not tell us. They preach the politics of fear and ask us to support political incarceration on demand and punishment without trial…

How on earth did a Labour Government get to the point of creating what was described in the House of Lords hearing as a “gulag” at Belmarsh? I remind my hon. Friends that a gulag is a black hole into which people are forcibly directed without hope of ever getting out.

The full transcript of his speech is available here or the speech can be viewed as video here.

Links via Phil Gyford and BoingBoing .

Tags: politics, terrorism

More info:
Committee to Protect Bloggers

BBC News: Global blogger action day called

Tags: liberty

That is the US navy’s new submarine the USS Jimmy Carter is on it’s way to Washington state where it will based out of Kitsap.

Heavily Armed USS Jimmy Carter in Fleet

By CARA RUBINSKY, Associated Press Writer

GROTON, Conn. – The USS Jimmy Carter entered the Navy’s fleet Saturday as the most heavily armed submarine ever built, and as the last of the Seawolf class of attack subs that the Pentagon ordered during the Cold War’s final years.

The $3.2 billion Jimmy Carter was commissioned Saturday, the first named after a living ex-president. Carter, himself a former submariner during his time in the Navy, was on hand for the ceremony signaling the end of an era in submarining.

The 453-foot, 12,000-ton submarine has a 50-torpedo payload and eight torpedo tubes. And, according to intelligence experts, it can tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them.

More…

Tags: security

Police have released CCTV footage of three men they are still trying to trace following an attack which left a 23-year-old man with facial injuries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4233289.stm

I guess they must be the Earth 2 versions of the superheroes.

Tags: comics, crime

The BBC’s Culture Show is clearly behind the times and trots out the now cliched report on how comics ain’t just for kids. Look here Middle England there are things called Graphic Novels and they deal with real issues in a serious way using a garphical format.

Graphic novels get real
Far from being stuck in an adolescent fantasy world, the latest trend in graphic novels is autobiographical and intimate. We look at Epileptic, the latest book by David B and trace the history of the real world in comic book form.

Random House website: Epileptic

The one British example of this ‘realist’ style of graphic novel that they present is the When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs which was published over 20 years ago in 1982. This strikes me as bizarre given that there has been a slew of critically acclaimed British comic writers that have come to prominance in the intervening period such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

These writers may have come to prominance mainly due to their superhero comics written for American comic companies but they have also produced great work in the ‘realist’ style. Alan Moore’s From Hell is on the surface a lurid penny dreadful about the Jack the Ripper killings but in my opinion has actually greater depth than anything shows like this normally present as graphic novels that might appeal to the middle classes such as Maus or Palestine.

Even moving into the more fantastical arena for this is where comic books can surpass all other media formats we have superlative stories which should be attracting a wider audience despite the distain that the intelligentsia seems to have for comic books. The satire of the now departed Transmetropolitan is very relevant today and to return to Moore the dystopian vision of the future in his V for Vendetta now seems to have become our reality. But where is V to save us now.

Tags: comics