Whereas an election is the legal process by which We, the People, transfer power to our governmental representatives; and

Whereas, current electronic voting technologies have been shown to be unreliable, insecure and unverifiable; and

Whereas, electronic voting technologies which do not include a permanent paper ballot of record provide no means to verify results reported by elections officials, through recounts or other legal means; and

Whereas, citizens are denied oversight of the software used in electronic voting and counting machines; and

Whereas, the use of proprietary (secret) software in our elections amounts to a secret vote count; and

Whereas, publicly-funded testing and certification of software and hardware of electronic voting systems is shrouded from public oversight; and

Whereas, current election procedures violate "chain of custody" laws thru the use of removable and/or remotely accessible memory cards, which now constitute the official ballot box; and,

Therefore, Be It Resolved that there is no basis for confidence in any election held under these conditions; and

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has chimed in for the "bring back nukes" crowd with an ill-conceived screed that completely ignores the reality that the world's power must ultimately come from clean, safe renewable energy and increased efficiency.

Entitled "Atomic Balm," the lengthy Sunday magazine piece tries to portray a nuke industry on its way back. But hidden throughout the article are trap after trap that will doom atomic power, and that show the Bush Administration's attempt to revive it to be ever more futile and corrupt.

To begin with, this very long article fails to mention that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has issued a draft report showing that between 99% and 124% of the nation's electricity can be supplied by renewable means by the year 2020. Since nuclear power supplies only electricity, this simple fact makes complete mincemeat of any pretext for bringing it back. If we can get the juice cheaper, safer, cleaner and more quickly from nature, why build sitting ducks for terrorists that have only 50 years of failure to show for a trillion dollars invested?

A radio show reported yesterday that Republican Texas Congressman Ron Paul said the following:

"I would have trouble arguing that he's been a Constitutional President, and once you violate the Constitution and be proven to do that I think these people should be removed from office."  

And this: "Congress has generously ignored the Constitution while the President flaunts it, the courts have ignored it and they get in the business of legislating so there's no respect for the rule of law."

And this: "When the President signs all these bills and then adds statements after saying I have no intention of following it - he's in a way signing it and vetoing - so in his mind he's vetoing a lot of bills, in our mind under the rule of law he hasn't vetoed a thing."

And Paul said the United States had entered a period of "soft fascism." 

VENICE -- A few moments after Italy dashed French hopes with that disappointing coda of penalty kicks, Alya and I took a five-minute stroll to the Piazza San Marco to see the locals celebrate their nation's capture of the World Cup for soccer. As we left, the TV in our hotel was showing Rome, Naples and Milan exploding in triumph. Alya's niece, staying in Milan, told her the next day that sleep had been impossible. The racket of cheers and honking horns had lasted all night.

In Venice, looking east across the vast expanse of the Piazza San Marco, we could see a knot of maybe 300 people down the far end, near the Basilica. As we drew nearer, they turned out to be tourists leveling their digital cameras at a knot of maybe 50 Italians lofting the national flag and dancing round in a circle. Things weren't much livelier in front of the Doge's Palace facing the Grand Canal.

The 2004 presidential contest between Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry and the Republican incumbent, President Bush Jr., amounted to another stolen election. This has been well documented by such investigators as Rep. John Conyers, Mark Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Bev Harris, and others. Here is an overview of what they have reported, along with observations of my own.

Some 105 million citizens voted in 2000, but in 2004 the turnout climbed to at least 122 million. Pre-election surveys indicated that among the record 16.8 million new voters Kerry was a heavy favorite, a fact that went largely unreported by the press. In addition, there were about two million progressives who had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 who switched to Kerry in 2004.

Yet the official 2004 tallies showed Bush with 62 million votes, about 11.6 million more than he got in 2000. Meanwhile Kerry showed only eight million more votes than Gore received in 2000. To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would needed to have kept all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors.