fayfreethinkers.com

DOUG
Obama has a lot of support among college students--so the GOP tries to trick college students into not voting?

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Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.

The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect, and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents’ car and health insurance.

After some inquiries from students and parents, and more pointed questions from civil rights lawyers, the state board of elections said Friday that it was “modifying and clarifying” the state guidelines on which the county registrar had based his releases.

See here.

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Mistake, or dirty trick?

Doug wrote:DOUG
Obama has a lot of support among college students--so the GOP tries to trick college students into not voting?

I'm not sure who's in charge here, but in 2004, there were signs plastered all over the UofA campus:
"Vote anywhere! ... Even if you're not registered here, vote at the Washington County courthouse [something like any day for a week before election day]!"
Clearly I was naive, but I thought that this was a great way to get students who were not from the area to be able to vote without having to trek back to their hometowns during the middle of the week to do it. The extra time, I thought, was to allow confirmation of registration and preparation for cross-checking records at other precincts to prevent people from voting twice.
Turns out that "vote anywhere" meant anywhere in the county if you were registered in this county, but that wasn't explained on any flier. It should have reeked as a case of too-good-to-be-true, but foolish optimism got the better of me. Perhaps this wasn't as detrimental as the possibility seems to me to be, but the designer of the sign was clearly in need of a gunshot wound to the kneecap.

DOUG
I knew it. I had heard about this a long time ago, and I always had strong suspicions that it was true. I was always suspicious of the timing of the release of the hostages. I knew it was a GOP dirty trick, even when it happened.

If you ever needed confirmation that Republicans don't give a damn about our troops, our country, the truth, or fair play, look no further. None other than St. Ronald Reagan, the guy many Republicans actually want chisled into Mount Rushmore, is in on this one.

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A Russian government report, which corroborated allegations that Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign interfered with President Jimmy Carter’s Iran-hostage negotiations in 1980, was apparently kept from the Democratic chairman of a congressional task force that investigated the charges a dozen years later.

The Russian report, which was dropped off at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Jan. 11, 1993, contradicted the task force’s findings – which were released two days later – of “no credible evidence” showing that Republicans contacted Iranian intermediaries behind President Carter’s back regarding 52 American hostages held by Iran’s Islamic revolutionary government, the so-called October Surprise case.

I was surprised by Hamilton’s unfamiliarity with the Russian report, so I e-mailed him a PDF copy. I then contacted the task force’s former chief counsel, attorney Lawrence Barcella, who acknowledged in an e-mail that he doesn’t “recall whether I showed [Hamilton] the Russian report or not.”

In other words, the Russian report – possibly representing Moscow’s first post-Cold War collaboration with the United States on an intelligence mystery – was not only kept from the American public but apparently from the chairman of the task force responsible for the investigation.

The revelation further suggests that the congressional investigation was shoddy and incomplete, thus reopening the question of whether Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980 was, in part, set in motion by a dirty trick that extended the 444-day captivity of the hostages who were freed immediately after Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981.

The coincidence between Reagan’s inauguration and the hostage release was curious to some but served mostly to establish in the minds of Americans that Reagan was a tough leader who instilled fear in U.S. adversaries. However, if the timing actually resulted from a clandestine arms-for-hostage deal, it would mean that Reagan’s presidency began with an act of deception, as well as an act of treachery.

The Russian report also implicates other prominent Republicans in the Iranian contacts, including the late William Casey (who was Reagan’s campaign director in 1980), George H.W. Bush (who was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate), and Robert Gates (who in 1980 had been a CIA officer on the National Security Council before becoming executive assistant to Carter’s CIA Director Stansfield Turner).

Casey, who served as Reagan’s first CIA director, died in 1987 before the 1980 allegations came under scrutiny. Bush, who was President during the task force’s 1992 inquiry, angrily denied the accusations at two news conferences but was never questioned under oath. Gates, who was CIA director in 1992 and is now President Barack Obama's Defense Secretary, also has brushed off the suspicions.

See here.