Congress Set to Inject Own Ass With Head
Matt Welch | January 14, 2008, 9:27am
The House of Representatives' Committee on "Oversight and Government Reform" wheezes into action tomorrow with another round of hearings on the pressing government-reform issue of steroids in baseball.
The congressmen are already in fine form. California Democrat Henry Waxman showed a charming pre-emptive fondness for collective guilt: "[E]veryone involved in Major League Baseball bears some responsibility for this scandal," he said. More:
"A lack of leadership and oversight in Major League Baseball enabled these abuses to continue. After 15 years of slow action, a new commissioner is needed to guide the league out of this era of drug abuse," [Florida Republican Cliff] Stearns said. [...]
"The first step in restoring the reputation of baseball is taking all necessary actions to show cheating will no longer be tolerated. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines while some players destroy the integrity of this sport," [Maryland Democrat Elijah] Cummings said.
Today, baseball. Tomorrow, hip-hop!
For contrary views, consult the New York Sun's Tim Marchman, The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, or our own voluminous past coverage.
To see a professional nostalgic do an endzone dance on the incarceration of a young mother who is "nursing one child and raising another," try Mitch Albom.
NOYFB | January 14, 2008, 9:58am | #
Committee on "Oversight and Government Reform"
HOW ABOUT THEY INVESTIGATE OUR VOTING MACHINES FIRST?
http://blackboxvoting.org/
- Both Democrat and Republican candidates have requested recounts
- More than half of New Hampshire's elections administrators hand count paper ballots in public at the polling place, with a public chain of custody. The rest of New Hampshire's towns and cities use Diebold voting machines to count votes in secret, with a secret chain of custody.
- Hand count and machine count locations, when calculated statewide, show an eerie statistic:
Clinton Optical scan 91,717 52.95%
Obama Optical scan 81,495 47.05%
Clinton Hand-counted 20,889 47.05%
Obama Hand-counted 23,509 52.95%
- Two hand count towns reported "zero" votes for candidate Ron Paul to the media, even though they did have votes for him. The town of Sutton reported zero, but had 31 votes; the town of Greenville reported zero, but had 25 votes. The two towns had misreported results affecting exactly the same candidate in exactly the same way.
- Results in many locations arrived up to four hours late on Election Night, surprisingly, from machine-counted locations -- not hand count locations;
- A single private entity had control over coding for every memory card in New Hampshire. According to the contract for LHS Associates, this firm requires a right of access to any voting machine at any time, services the machines, maintains the machines and handles repairs, replacements and troubleshooting on Election Day.
- Ken Hajjar, a key employee of this sole source private entity, LHS Associates, has a criminal record for narcotics trafficking. The state of New Hampshire knew of this conviction but approved the contractor anyway. According to a complaint filed with the New Hampshire Attorney General, Hajjar had called the Dan Pierce radio show in 1999 and threatened to rig an election.
- A high number of "other" votes appeared in Manchester, where over 570 people apparently decided to go to the polls and choose none of the first tier OR second tier candidates.
- The voting system in New Hampshire was updated, but to a version that had been proven to be vulnerable in studies in Florida and California. Instead of upgrading to newer versions which at least claim to address known security vulnerabilities, New Hampshire chose to implement none of the beefed up procedures or upgraded versions that other states are using.
