As most of you know, the Senate -- both sides of it -- reamed the petulant boy who is our attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.
The part that really caught the Brawler's interest (no, the non-answers about Biskupic did not) was a discussion about Gonzales' consultation with George Bush and Karl Rove about alleged "voter fraud" in Milwaukee and elsewhere.
And when these guys discuss voter fraud, it's safe to say the conversation goes along the lines of "How can we claim voter faud so that we can push voter suppression efforts?" Such as, you know, purging voter roles or throwing out charges of phantom voters to see if they stick.
From Talking Points Memo:
Gonzales could not recall details about his conversation with Karl Rove about voter fraud, although he testified that he did have such a conversation. He said that it covered three jurisdictions -- New Mexico, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. He could not recall when or where or how it had occurred, only that it was in the fall of 2006.
He pinpointed the date of his conversation with President Bush about those same three jurisdictions as happening on October 11.
The time element caught the Brawler's attention. After a brief furrowed brow moment, he remembered this story from the October 26, 2006 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Republicans launched new allegations Thursday of flawed Milwaukee voter lists, less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election.
But the problem addresses represent a small fraction of the city's total voters, and many if not all of the problems appear to be minor errors, not vote fraud, the city's election chief said.
Democrats struck back by accusing the GOP of trying to suppress votes.
GOP leaders held a news conference in a south side parking lot, across from a freeway bridge. They said someone had voted after giving their address as 2056 S. 5th St., which is vacant land beneath I-43/94.
That was just one of more than 1,600 such suspect addresses, the Republicans charged.
"It means people are voting from these addresses, and they don't live here," said state Sen. Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield).
State GOP Chairman Brad Courtney said city election officials "have failed the voters of Wisconsin" by not correcting the errors.
The GOP allegations mirror ones the party raised before the 2004 presidential election.
Ah yes, the 2004 election, a banner year in still uninvestigated GOP voter suppression efforts. And in 2006, as in 2004, the errors were largely human errors. In one instance, a street name had been changed since the roll was created.
But of course, the really interesting thing here is that the state GOP came out with this line about two weeks after Gonzales and Bush had their conversation.
Maybe it's worth looking into communications between the White House and the WI GOP in the runup to the 2006 elections. Who knows, maybe this came up.
(Obviously the GOP's scare tactics didn't work. And the media didn't hop all over it the way they did the last time -- no doubt in part because St. Steven Biskupic had declared he had found no evidence of a voter fraud conspiracy in Milwaukee (on his way to prosecuting a young mother and a grandmother on ridiculous charges).
But the fact that it didn't work doesn't make raising bogus charges any less reprehensible. And if the gubernatorial race had been any closer -- instead of Doyle mopping the floor with Green -- you can bet the Repubs would have used this list as Exhibit A of widespread irregularity.)
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