Counties Are Failing to Keep Voter Rolls Clean

Clarke County, Mississippi has more people registered to vote than are alive. And my firm, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, on behalf of the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), is doing something about it.

First, some context. You’ve likely heard of the “Motor Voter” act passed in the early 90’s, but you may not recall the specifics of the law. Called the “National Voter Registration Act”, it was touted as a means of making voter registration easier. Congress created a standardized federal registration form and, among other things, required states to promote voter registration including, enter the nickname, when someone applies for a driver’s license.

A lesser-known provision of the Act requires local election officials to maintain the voter registration lists regularly. In short, the officials must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the voter lists are as accurate as possible. This includes seemingly-obvious steps such as removing deceased voters as well as those who have moved away.

Not only is such list maintenance required by federal law but the benefits are myriad, including ensuring clean elections and providing an accurate picture of the voter turnout in the county. Dirty voter rolls provide the perfect environment for hard-to-detect voter fraud.

Fast forward to 2014. Publicly-available data showed that Clarke County had more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote. The ACRU went back to data from previous years and saw that this was not a one-time occurrence. Unfortunately, the Obama Justice Department is not acting to enforce the important federal requirement of election roll maintenance. So the ACRU sent the county a letter pointing out the problem, and requested more information. It received no response. It also made several attempts to work with the county to fix the problem but no progress was made.

The problem is urgent because Mississippi is holding statewide elections this fall to elect state officials.

This week, the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court on ACRU’s behalf seeking to force Clarke County to comply with federal law and clean up its rolls. This is the first case filed by the Foundation as part of its efforts to clean up voter rolls around the nation.

Kaylan L. Phillips is an attorney with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting and restoring election integrity.

Via: Human Events

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Obama Internet Giveaway May Open Pandora’s Box of Porn

Introducing another social pathology to join all the others low–income homes already suffer from hardly seems like an improvement, but that’s the way government works as it “helps.”

President Obama has a new administration initiative, supported by tax dollars, to close the Internet pornography gap. The divide is caused by ill–gotten gains that give too many Americans fast, broadband access to the booming porn industry; while other Americans are reduced to lurking in seedy newsstands, sneaking peeks between the pages of lurid magazines and hoping the clerk doesn’t notice their free browsing.

ConnectHome “will bring high–speed broadband access to over 275,000 low-income households across the US.”

That’s good news for pornographers. They can always use new customers. Thirty percent of all data transferred on the Internet is porn according to The Huffington Post. While porn sites have more visitors than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

HuffPost also contends poor people are already online and elevating their heart rate. Mississippi is dead last in per capita income, yet this state leads the nation in average time — almost 12 minutes — spent per porn site.

There are a number of possible explanations. The extra time could be due to initial stupefaction on the part of Mississippi viewers or the Internet connection could be so turgid that viewers don’t want to waste time waiting for a new site to load. It’s even possible there’s a single Internet terminal in the library and viewers have to hot–seat the only chair.

Certainly closing the porn gap is not the official reason for the program, even though it’s likely to be the result.

Once again “it’s the children.” Cnet.com explains, “The effort will initially connect nearly 200,000 children to the Web.” Or as administration flacks put it, “While many middle-class U.S. students go home to Internet access, allowing them to do research, write papers, and communicate digitally with their teachers and other students, too many lower-income children go unplugged every afternoon when school ends.”

Via: Canada Fres Press

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From Sea to Shining Sea: 5 Examples of Voter Fraud across America

Contrary to the assertions of many, voter fraud is not a myth.

It is a stark reality that exists nationwide, from the rural counties of Georgia to the urban centers of New York.

The Heritage Foundation has documented nearly 250 cases where nefarious citizens, officials, candidates and campaign operatives conspired to commit vote fraud, compromising the integrity of our elections to achieve their ideological goals.

That list is just a tiny sampling of voter fraud, and it keeps growing. In May, the Heritage Foundation highlighted several recent cases.

Here are some of the egregious new additions to the voter fraud database:

1. Kentucky

In eastern Kentucky, Ross Harris and Loren Glenn Turner funneled $41,000 to the 2002 county judgeship campaign of Doug Hays for what the defendants claimed was a lawful operation to pay more than 1,200 people $50 each to drive voters to the polls.

But a jury determined that this alleged vote-hauling program was just a disguise for what was in reality a vote-buying scheme. The punishment reflected the severity of the fraud: Hays was sentenced to six months behind bars, and Harris was hit with a $100,000 fine.

2. Mississippi

Not to be outdone, William Greg Eason of Tallahatchie County, Mississippibribed voters with beer and money to cast fraudulent absentee ballots for a district supervisor candidate in a 2003 run-off election. A jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to two years in prison, a punishment that also clearly reflected the severity of the offense.

3. West Virginia

Voter fraud and its ill effects are not limited to elections for local offices. On the contrary, voter fraud can and often does occur in connection with elections to the nation’s highest offices. In Lincoln County, West Virginia, Circuit Clerk Greg Stowers and five other Democrats were charged in 2005 with participating in a conspiracy to buy votes in congressional and presidential elections dating back to 1990.

The men paid for votes in liquor and cash (typically $20 per vote), handed out slates listing preferred candidates, and performed favors for supporters. All six eventually pleaded guilty to these charges in 2006, and Stowers was sentenced to six months in federal prison.

4. Georgia

A case out of Georgia shows that voter fraud has the power to steal an election from the rightful victor.

Tommy Raney, a 2007 candidate for a city council seat, and his campaign worker, Debra Brown, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit absentee ballot fraud.

Raney won the election against Larry Pickett by only 27 votes. Raney and Brown were fined $158,000 and $20,000, respectively. Despite the fraud, the election results were never officially overturned, and Raney did not resign his city council seat until nearly two years later, in September of 2009.

5. Iowa

Martia Yvonne Phillips and eight others in Iowa pleaded guilty to voting in the 2008 election despite being convicted felons who had not had their voting rights restored. Phillips voted while still on probation for a 2006 felony drug conviction. She was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison, a sentence that was suspended to two years’ probation.

Voter fraud clearly exists in many forms and in many places despite earnest efforts by some authorities to crack down hard on offenders. Moreover, voter fraud is easy to commit and tough to investigate after the fact, particularly when inadequate safeguards exist to detect the crime in the first place.

That is why it is important for state legislatures to enact commonsense legislation designed to combat voter fraud before it can distort an electoral result. Voter ID laws—which many liberals love to criticize, but which a majority of Americans across ideological lines support—are an answer to many types of voter fraud, including fraudulent use of absentee ballots.

But other measures are also needed, such as requiring proof of citizenship to register and verification of the accuracy of voter registration information.

Critics often argue that laws intended to uphold the integrity of elections are ineffective and unnecessary.

Voting Fraud Prevented

But take the case of Carol Hannah of Colorado. Hannah was registered to vote in Mohave County, Arizona and Adams County, Colorado and was convicted of voting in both states during the 2010 election. Hannah’s double-voting was detected by the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, a system that examines shared voter data from more than 25 states and checks for identical name and date-of-birth matches to ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and to ensure that individuals like Hannah cannot unlawfully double-dip.

In that case, the program did exactly what it was designed to do. Hannah was sentenced to three years of supervised probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.

Democracy is one of America’s finest traditions; voter fraud is not.

The implications of these cases are clear: election fraud exists, and it is neither isolated nor inconsequential. We can and must take steps to detect and deter this problem.

Via: Daily Signal

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Can Court Clerks Decline to Do Gay Marriages? How It’s Playing Out in the States

A few cases of public employees who cite their faith in declining to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples have grabbed media attention, but similar concerns exist in scores of courthouses across America, a lawyer for a prominent Christian legal organization says.

“In most instances the government can accommodate the religious beliefs of the objecting person,” @AllianceDefends’ Jeremy Tedesco

A  suit against a Kentucky court clerk was scheduled to be heard today by a federal judge, and county commissions were set to vote on the resignations of clerks in Tennessee and Texas.

The cases, the lawyer told The Daily Signal, are just three examples of difficult choices created by the Supreme Court’s5-4 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the nation.

“I think the bottom line is, in most instances the government can accommodate the religious beliefs of the objecting person,” said Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.

An ultimatum of “comply or lose your job” by some LGBT activists and their supporters, he said, runs counter to “our rich history of religious freedom and religious accommodation.”

Civil disobedience to the ruling, and to instructions issued by governors and other state authorities, initially occurred among clerks and other court employees in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas.

However, Tedesco said the offices of Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, have been “inundated” by calls and emails from courthouse employees and officials who aren’t sure what their office will do, want to understand their rights, or have asked for an accommodation for their faith but haven’t yet gotten one.

>>> For more on religious liberty and same-sex marriage, see Ryan T. Anderson’s new book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom.”

In some cases, clerks and other court employees have resigned rather than issue licenses for same-sex nuptials.

Via: Daily Signal

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Police officer 'dragged into the woods to be killed by three men' saved when his K-9 chases after him and sends the attackers running

A police officer who was dragged into the woods by three attackers was saved thanks to his trusty dog.

Deputy Todd Frazier of Long Beach, Mississippi, a K-9 officer, pulled over last Monday night to check on a car when he noticed that the man in the front seat appeared to be passed out and the lights were off.

That is when two men appeared nearby and distracted him as the driver got out and ambushed him. All three men dragged Frazier into the nearby woods.

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Attacked: Deputy Todd Frazier (above) of Long Beach, Mississippi, pulled over last Monday night to check on a car with the driver passed out in the front seat and was suddenly dragged off into the woods to be killed

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Saved: He was able to unlock the backdoor of his squad car from his keychain and release his K-9 Lucas (above), who bit at least one man and scared them off

'They told him they were going to slit his throat, and they were dragging him toward the woods,' Chief Deputy Don Bass said according to The Clarion-Ledger.

He said the men then planned on dumping the body after killing him.

When asked if the incident might have something to do with recent gangs stating they would attack any police officers they encountered on sight, Bass said: 'At this point in time I don't care.'

Regardless of their motivation, the men were quickly foiled when Frazier managed to unlock the back doors of his squad car using a pop mechanism that he activated on his key chain.

That sent Lucas, Frazier's police dog, running after his owner and the men.

The dog bit at least one of the attackers before they ran off, jumping into the Town Car Frazier first stopped to inspect and speeding away from the scene.

Frazier suffered a two-and-a-half-inch cut to his forehead from what a doctor believes was a box cutter and multiple other bodily injuries. 

He was taken to a local hospital and released.

Via: Daily Mail UK

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Mississippi hold-up ends when victim shoots, kills one of his robbers

The victim of a harrowing gunpoint robbery in Mississippi on Saturday grabbed a gun out of his truck and opened fire, killing one robber and sending the other fleeing.

Jackson Police said the victim turned the tables on a pair of robbers after he was robbed of his wallet and forced to drive to an ATM to get money,Mississippi News Now reported.

Police found the body of robbery suspect Edwin Robinson, 23, on Pinewood Drive, a residential street in northeast Jackson.  They said the shooting appeared justified.

“I heard about six gunshots at about 6:30 a.m., went to let one of my dogs out and heard some more gunshots,” a resident told the station. “We saw people standing around, and a body and a truck.”

The station said the victim of the stick-up was a doctor. He was not hurt.

Police told the station the doctor was in the driveway of his home when Robinson and another man surprised him. They had guns and announced a robbery.
Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] 2 Mississippi Police Officers Killed in Shooting; Officers, Suspects Identified (UPDATED)

Late Saturday evening, police officers Officers Benjamin J. Deen and Liquori Tate died after being shot while on-duty in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Three suspects have been charged in connection with the shooting, two with several counts of capital murder.

The shooting occurred after a traffic stop. Per NBC News and the Associated Press:

A Hattiesburg officer had stopped a 2000 Gold Cadillac Escalade in an industrial corridor about 8:30 p.m. CDT.

Strain said a second officer arrived to help and shots were fired. He said the shooting occurred near an area of apartment houses and that officers had told people immediately afterward to “take shelter” while they searched for two suspects.

The suspects fled in one of the officer’s vehicles, which was later found abandoned near rail road tracks, officials told WDAM.

According to The Clarion-Ledger, the two currently-unnamed officers were taken to Forrest General Hospital, where they were confirmed dead. One of the officers was reportedly still alive upon arrival. According to local news services, the officers are the first in the area to die in the line of duty since 1984.

The suspects have been identified as Marvin and Curtis Banks:

VIA: MEDIAITE

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THE $128 TRILLION RIP-OFF

The biggest theft in world history is occurring right here, right now—literally, right under our feet. It’s a theft of wealth that measures in the 15-digits—wealth that’s being taken away from its rightful owners, the American people, and being sacrificed, in effect, to the Green Gods of Austerity and Sacrifice.

The exact size of the loot? It totals $128 trillion in recoverable oil and natural gas, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research (IER). To put that $128 trillion sum in perspective, we could use a mere 13 percent of it to pay off the entire US national debt. Indeed, that $128 trillion is almost 35 times greater than federal expenditures for fiscal year 2014, and more than seven times the annual US GDP.

We might note that IER’s $128 trillion estimate includes only oil and gas; no one has any real idea how much more wealth—in the form of coal, rare earth elements, and who knows what else—is to be found in the the 28 percent of land in the US that’s owned by federal government.

At present, there’s no plan whatsoever to do anything to utilize this wealth as the Obama administration is seeking ever-tighter federal regulations, and, beyond the Keystone Pipeline, Republicans hardly ever raise the issue.

In fact, the IER study was released more than a year ago, and nobody seems to have noticed. Since then, we’ve had endless negotiations over some sort of “grand bargain” to raise taxes and cut earned senior entitlements—and in the meantime, we’ve been ignoring the grandest bargain of all: abundance.

Seems more than a little ridiculous, doesn’t it? That is, for the U.S. to be scraping along, fiscally and economically, while leaving fallow such gargantuan natural resources?

Moreover, to get at this wealth, we don’t need to drill in Yosemite or other National Parks; we simply need to access the vast federal lands on and offshore in the "Lower 48," Alaska, and the many overseas U.S. territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

So how did this wealth freeze-out happen? How did so much treasure get locked up and unused? Here’s how: in the early 19th century, the federal government sold off or gave away most of its lands in the east. Then, in 1862, came the first of a series of Homestead Acts, which led to the glorious privatization of much of the Midwest. Yet the mostly arid lands west of the Mississippi were generally not seen as viable property for homesteading, and so Uncle Sam continued to hold title. Then the environmentalists came along and realized that they could gain de facto control of more than a quarter of US territory. Congress repealed the Homestead Act in 1976, and after that, the environmentalists happily proceeded with their no-growth plans. 

However, the Green land-grabbing did provoke a pro-growth backlash in the West, the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion,” dedicated to opposing enviro-liberalism. The Sagebrush Rebels helped Ronald Reagan carry every Western state, save Hawaii, in the 1980 presidential election; the hope was that Reagan would open the West to development. Unfortunately, their point man in Washington, Interior Secretary James G. Watt, turned out to be bit of a kook with a nasty sense of humor; he was forced out of office in 1983, and that was the end of the Sagebrushers as a force.

In the decades since, Green Democrats, joined by more than a few Green Republicans, have banned drilling everywhere they could. The bans on offshore drilling are a nice perk for rich people who treasure their ocean views, but it’s not so great for everyone else who needs money or a job.

Meanwhile, other countries have charged ahead. Norway, for example, eagerly drills in the waters outside of its scenic fjords; that’s why the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund is worth $783 billion—not bad for a country of just five million people. When the oil is gone, the oil wells will be gone, and Norway will still be rich because of all that money in the bank.

Via: Breitbart

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[VIDEO] Sebelius: ‘Whatever, Yes,’ Obama’s Responsible

Kathleen Sebelius had an exasperated response for the congressional committee today, when pressed as to whether President Obama is ultimately responsible for problems facing Obamacare.

“Whatever, yes — he is the president, he is responsible for government programs,” she said at Wednesday’s hearing, after first rejecting Republican representative Gregg Harper’s claims that the president can be held accountable for the health-care law’s implementation.

Via: NRO

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