Here's a whopper among whoppers from Ol Lady Owen Robinson's Waukesha Freeman column on why we need voter ID:
For decades, the crooks of Tammany Hall in New York City routinely stuffed ballot boxes, twisted arms, and invented vote tallies to make sure that their fellow crooks were elected into office. During the LaGuardia administration and for several years afterwards, Tammany was so corrupt that it was none other than the "Prime Minister" of the mob, Frank Costello, who pulled the strings of New York politics.
Owen likes to say he's a history buff, but linking LaGuardia and Tammany is just stone-ignorant, as revealed by a simple glance at wikipedia:
In 1932, the machine suffered a dual setback when Mayor James Walker was forced from office and reform-minded Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president. Roosevelt stripped Tammany of federal patronage, which had been expanded under the New Deal—and passed it instead to Ed Flynn, boss of the Bronx. Roosevelt helped Republican Fiorello LaGuardia become mayor on a Fusion ticket, thus removing even more patronage from Tammany's control.
The Brawler is stunned at Robinson's slander of the little flower, all the more so because over at B&S he suggests that LaGuardia was a Democrat...
Moreover, LaGuardia was not known for his love of the mob:
Being of Italian descent and growing up in a time when crime and criminals were prevalent in New York, LaGuardia loathed the gangsters who brought a negative stereotype and shame to the Italian community. When he was elected to his first term in 1933, the first thing he did after being sworn in was to pick up the phone and order the chief of police to arrest mob boss Lucky Luciano on whatever charges could be found. LaGuardia then went after the gangsters with a vengeance, stating in a radio address to the people of New York in his high-pitched, squeaky voice, "Let's drive the bums out of town." In 1934, LaGuardia's went on a search-and-destroy mission on mob boss Frank Costello's slot machines, which LaGuardia executed with a gusto, rounding up thousands of the "one armed bandits," swinging a sledgehammer and dumping them off a barge into the water for the newspapers and media. In 1936, LaGuardia had special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, a future Republican presidential candidate, single out Lucky Luciano for prosecution. Dewey led a successful investigation into Luciano's lucrative prostitution operation, eventually sending Luciano to jail on a 30-50 year sentence.
Does Owen wonder why people laugh at the "When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" line in "Animal House"?
And in any event, don't Republicans feel the case for Voter ID is a bit ... weak ... when none of their examples of widespread voter fraud are more current than the Richard J. Daley machine (they never mention Nixon shenanigans in 1960 btw)? And they can never demonstrate that voter fraud has been an issue in Milwaukee or Wisconsin? Or that there's a machine that can actually sponsor and direct fraud, as was the case in Tammany, Daley's Chicago or the Jim Crow south?
An extra bonus in the column: Owen citing Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich as experts on voter fraud!
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