Will precinct-by-precinct, 15 minute-by-15 minute election night results that are available only to the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, compromise the security of the statewide election?

In Ohio’s notorious 2004 presidential election, called by pollster Lou Harris “one of the most corrupt in U.S. history,” one of the signs of election tampering was the impossible results flowing from precincts in Republican rural Ohio. In Cyde, Ohio they initially reported 130 percent voter turnout.

In Perry County, one precinct came in at 120 percent, another at 114 percent. In Miami County, the Concord Southwest precinct claimed 679 out of 689 voters cast ballots overwhelmingly for Bush. They later admitted to The Free Press that only 549 people signed into the polls and that the other votes had been the result of bad computer tallies.

Now with Ohio’s new election night reporting system it is easier than ever to stack the deck and bring in the cybervote at the precinct level.

Secretary of State’s strange secret software patches suspected purpose to steal election

The United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, allowed Ohio’s notoriously racist voting laws to remain in place during the 2014 election. Ohio Secretary of State (SoS) Jon Husted has embraced the new Jim Crow policy of limiting access to the polls by poor, elderly and black voters.

Husted, under a twisted version of “equality” has limited Ohio’s nine major urban areas to having only one early voting site each, guaranteed to create long lines as it did in the 2004 and 2012 elections. In 2008, then-SoS Jennifer Brunner allowed the Franklin County Board of Elections to establish five early voting centers in the greater Columbus area.

Last week, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld federal Judge Peter Economus’ historic ruling protecting African American voting rights in Ohio. In a September 4, 2014 opinion, Economus held that the actions of Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted violated both the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by erecting illegal barriers to keep minorities and the poor from voting in the Buckeye State.

Startling news: Sweden now recycles 99 percent of its waste.

At least that’s what people are saying, including an official website of Sweden itself: “Less than one per cent of Sweden’s household waste ends up in a rubbish dump.” There may be less to this statement than meets the eye, but before I address that issue, I need to pause at the jolt of ecstatic excitement and jubilant incredulity I felt for a moment — that maybe the resource-consuming, planet-destroying, multinational political and economic system I’m part of is capable of correcting its own insanity, committing itself to a sustainable future and embracing the circle of life.

I’ve gotten used to living with despair: that so little of our effort, energy, intelligence and determination are invested in creating a sustainable future; and, indeed, that humanity’s macro-organizations, its national governments, its multinational business enterprises, expend their enormous power not only contributing to the devastation but sabotaging every effort to make it stop.

Dostoievski once had a character imagine what a head would think if for some seconds it were aware of having been cut off by an executioner's guillotine, or if somehow it were aware for a full minute, or even for five minutes.

I should think such a head would think thoughts entirely dependent on the circumstances and that the type of blade that committed the murder wouldn't affect the thoughts too greatly.

I loved you, it might think, thinking of its loved ones. I did well there, if might think, thinking of its accomplishments. I'm sorry, it might think, dwelling momentarily on its deepest regrets -- as likely as not relatively trivial incidents in which the head together with its body had hurt someone's feelings.

I've died in a war, the head might think, despite opposing wars. I took the risk and enjoyed the thrill, yet the injustice remains. I didn't launch the war. I didn't make millions off it. I didn't win votes from it. I tried to tell people what it was, and here I am no better than a soccer ball about to cease existing as a consciousness.

Many journalists probably got into the field for the same reason I did: because they were inspired by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and their courageous work to unravel the Nixon era’s Watergate scandal.

A 1976 film based on their efforts, All the President’s Men, was likely the strongest recruiting tool the journalistic profession ever had.

In contrast, Kill the Messenger may be journalism’s weakest recruiter. It may even persuade some would-be reporters to forge a new career path.

True, the film shows journalism at its best in the form of Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner), a reporter who fights to reveal an alleged connection between the CIA and inner-city drug sales. But it also shows modern journalism at its worst in the form of major media outlets (including The Washington Post) that seem more eager to leap to the CIA’s defense than they are to give Webb’s findings a fair hearing.