CNN.com – Poll: Majority of voters would not re-elect Bush – Nov. 8, 2003

A poll released Saturday finds that more registered voters want to see President Bush voted out than kept in office in the next election….

In the Newsweek poll, 50 percent of registered voters who were queried said they do not want to see Bush re-elected, while 44 percent said they do. …

51 percent of the respondents said they disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq — the highest Newsweek’s polls have ever shown — while 42 percent said they approve. …

Forty-four percent said they approve of the way Bush is handling the economy — up six points from the magazine’s previous poll a month ago. Forty-eight percent said they disapprove.

Poll shows independents leaning against Bush re-election

A majority of independents, 53 percent, said they oppose Bush’s re-election, while 40 percent favor it, according to the Newsweek poll. Republicans favor his re-election by an 86-10 margin, while Democrats oppose it by the same amount.

File Sharing Pits Copyright Against Free Speech

Diebold Election Systems, which makes voting machines, is waging legal war against grass-roots advocates, including dozens of college students, who are posting on the Internet copies of the company’s internal communications about its electronic voting machines. …

Diebold has become a favorite target of advocates who accuse it of partisanship: company executives have made large contributions to the Republican Party and the chief executive, Walden W. O’Dell, said in an invitation to a fund-raiser that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.’’ …

“Are these companies staffed by folks completely ignorant of computer security,” she said, “or are they just blatantly flaunting that they can breach every possible rule of protocol and still sell voting machines everywhere with impunity?” …

“It’s very different from the way that Diebold has been doing things.” Mr. Rubin, who has received a cease-and-desist notice from Diebold because of his research, said, “The solution is to stop selling insecure voting machines and not to continue threatening students who are only trying to protect our democracy.”

From one of the internal memos:

“I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here “looking dumb”.” [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/support.w3archive/200101/msg00068.html ]

Memo Excerpts

Here is another memo excerpt (and link to them all):

Re: jresult doubles the votes – in 1-17-7-3

Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 [mjh: two weeks before Bush v Gore]

We ran central count totals of 134 ballots and it shows as 268 votes on the Jview.exe.
Continue reading Can we trust electronic voting machines? →

Op-Ed Columnist: The Big Chill at the Lab by Bob Herbert

A list of nearly 200 scientific researchers has been compiled and given to federal officials by the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative group that goes wild over gay issues and federal funding of research related to human sexuality.

The list, which has sent a chill through some researchers, is being used by the coalition and its government allies in attempts to discredit the researchers and challenge or revoke their federal grants. It’s a sloppy, dangerous and wildly inaccurate list, put together by people who are freaked out by the content of the studies, and unconcerned about their value. …

“Those inquiries come in a very negative tone,” said Dr. Auerbach. “And they cast aspersions on the quality and the content of the science — from someone who doesn’t know how to conduct science, and is not a scientist. So the N.I.H. has been put in the position frequently in the last year of having to re-justify research that has already been peer-reviewed, approved and funded.”

Science has to suffer when the know-nothings come traipsing through the laboratories, infecting the research with their religious beliefs and political ideologies. Andrea Lafferty is the executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, which she says represents more than 43,000 churches.

”What makes us unique among all the conservative groups,” she said, ”is that I believe we truly represent the body of Christ.” …

The public officials who got their hands on this sinister list could have thrown it in the garbage. Instead, the list is circulating, like an insidious disease, and some scientists are worried that they are not immune.

Bush Labels Aide Rice the ‘Unsticker’

President Bush gave his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, a new job description Tuesday: the White House’s ”unsticker.” …

”The role of the national security adviser is to not only provide good advice to the president, which she does on a regular basis,” the president said during a Rose Garden news conference, “… but her job is also to deal inter-agency and to help unstick things that may get stuck. That’s the best way to put it. She’s an unsticker.”

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: Abortion Rites by James Ridgeway

Observers speak in amazement of the neoconservatives’ ascendancy in setting Bush foreign policy. It is nothing compared with the Christian fundamentalist sweep under way in Washington across a range of domestic issues reaching directly into everyday life in America. We’re coming close to turning the governance of the nation over to a marginalized group within the Christian community.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: Bush Boys Play Doctor by James Ridgeway

Is there a doctor in the White House? George W. Bush promised to get the government off our backs, but the federal presence has grown, not shrunk. Now he adds yet one more chore, that of doctor of last resort. …

[This] could result in a backlash from conservatives who have ceaselessly preached the sanctity of the family and making government smaller. It exposes the rent in the Republican right between the libertarian-minded get-the-government-off-our-backs crowd and the Christian advocates of a strong central state who want to hammer home their social policies on the local level, too.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: Dems for Death by James Ridgeway

[S]ix of the nine candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are for the death penalty. Only Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun are in outright opposition.