Democrats "get out the vote"

In the "debate" among Democratic candidates for president on Monday evening, Governor Bill Richardson brought up the Democrats' old grievance about the alleged "suppression" of minority voters (Florida 2000?), pledging to push for increased voter registration. Sure, why not!?

Meanwhile, in Washington state, seven paid employees and supervisors of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) were indicted for having "allegedly committed the biggest voter-registration fraud in state history." Of course, ACORN leaders say it was just an isolated group of over-enthusiastic workers, but these sorts of things have been going on for years. See Seattle Times. Now do you get it?

This case illustrates why, generally speaking, I am dubious of efforts to "get out the vote" by either party. It sounds reasonable enough, but even aside from the incentives to cheat, it encourages many people who don't really know much about public affairs to participate in choosing elected leaders. That is not necessarily a good thing.

Border Patrol agents to prison?

GOP-USA is leading an online petition drive to persuade President Bush to pardon Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, the Border Patrol agents who were sentenced to prison because they shot an illegal alien who was smuggling a huge stash of marijuana into the United States. Bush has weak credentials on border security, but I'm betting he will see the light and give those law enforcement officers a break, which they richly deserve -- certainly more than Scooter Libby deserved having his sentence commuted.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 28 Jul 2007, 1: 19 AM .

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My blog practices

My general practice is to make no more than one blog post per day on any one category. For this reason, some blog posts may address more than one specific issue, as indicated by separate headings. If something important happens during the day after I make a blog post, I may add an updated paragraph or section to it, using the word "UPDATE" and sometimes a horizontal rule to distinguish the new material from the original material. For each successive day, blog posts are listed on the central blog page (which brings together all topics) from top to bottom in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the order in which the posts were originally made:

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War
Science & Technology *
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* part of "Macintosh & Miscellanous" until Feb. 2007

The date of each blog post refers to when the bulk of it was written, in the Eastern Time Zone. For each blog post, the time and date of the original posting (or the last update or comment thereupon) is displayed on the individual archival blog post page that appears (just before the comments section) when you click the [LINK / comments] link next to the date. Non-trivial corrections and clarifications to original blog entries are indicated by the use of [brackets] and/or ~~strikethroughs~~, as appropriate so as to accurately convey both the factual truth and my original representation of it. Nobody's perfect, but I strive for continual improvement. That is also why some of the nature photos that appear on the archive pages may differ from the (inferior) ones that were originally posted.

The current "home made" blog organization system that I created, featuring real permalinks, was instituted on November 1, 2004. Prior to that date, blog posts were handled inconsistently, and for that reason the pre-2005 archives pages are something of a mess. Furthermore, my blogging prior to June 1, 2004 was often sporadic in terms of frequency.

Blog errata
(preliminary)

April 4, 2008: "Andy Ashby" should be "Andy Jones"

April 3, 2010: "Mike Morgan" should be "Nyjer Morgan"

: "" should be ""

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