The most unprincipled and opportunistic man in the history of Ohio, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, stands poised to claim the Republican primary for governor. Blackwell and his far-right theocratic “rapture-ready” Christian dominionists will doom the Buckeye State to further despair.

It should come as no surprise that the Free Press is the only newspaper in Ohio willing to out Blackwell for appearing before white supremacists in the secretive Council on National Policy. Blackwell understands power; he understands that there’s plenty of money in putting a black face on the new politics of high-tech Jim Crow. Blackwell also understands that in order for his strategy to succeed, he must convince a significant number of black ministers to join him in his open bigotry against gays and lesbians.

This is simply the old apartheid politics of divide and conquer. Blackwell wants to rule the new Buckeye State Bantustan.

The fact that electronic voting machines don't work may finally be sinking into a segment of the mainstream media. The fact that e-voting machines can, have been, and will be used to steal elections, continues to go unreported.

At least the corporate media has moved from framing the allegations of e-voting fraud as “conspiracy theory” into reporting epic errors in election results.

Both USA Today and the New York Times have run recent articles on the mechanical problems surrounding electronic voting that mirror much of what happened during the theft the presidential election in Ohio 2004.

On March 28, USA Today's front page reported, that "Primary voting-machine troubles raise concerns for general election." The story focused on primaries in Illinois and Texas, where all-too-familiar problems include more votes being counted than there were registered voters, and thousands of votes missing from a recount.

Even Texas voters couldn’t ignore the fact that an initial ballot tally in Ft. Worth showed 150,000 votes “. . . even though there were only one-third that many voters,” according to USA Today.

It may seem as though it's been moving along at a snail's pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials.

These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation.

In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

On March 26, a television station interviewed me right after I heard the debate at the Riffe Center in downtown Columbus between Christian-right Blackwell supporter, Rev. Russell Johnson of the Ohio Restoration Project and pastor of Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, Ohio, and Washington, DC based Left-wing Christian author and editor of Sojourner’s magazine, Rev. Jim Wallis. When pressed Wallis said he thinks Barack Obama exemplifies the progressive views he espouses, and he supports John Edwards for President in ’08. I truly hope I did not appear on TV and that they destroyed the tape. I think I was under the influence of euphoria of walking around in the enemy’s camp, being fed with tasty snacks from the Lancaster Church, and remaining alive. As proof that I was under some kind of “mushy let’s all just love each other” spell, as soon as I got to my truck, I snapped out of it, and thought. “Whoa! There is something more than meets the eye going on here!”

Hollywood’s latest blockbuster V for Vendetta, another comic book adaptation, is the cause to commotion and ongoing discussions. Praised as an anti-authoritarian action film on the one hand, criticized for it’s recasting of current American politics on the other.

Originally a comic produced in the mid 1980s by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta is about a man who destroys the corrupt state he lives in, promoting Anarchy to the masses all the while.

Obviously, Hollywood twisted this core message so severely, that Alan Moore asked to be withdrawn from all media references and to have his name removed from the film's posters.

"One of the things I objected to in the recent film ... recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see."

Alan Moore started working on the novel around 1981, a time of severe political insecurity in Britain. Margret Thatcher had been in power for two years. There were riots all over the country and fascists groups, trying to make political capital out of what were fairly depressed and jobless times.

300+ Organizations & 5,000+ Individuals Protest Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act: The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation stepped up today its campaign against HR4681, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, by delivering to the House International Relations Committee a letter opposing the bill signed by more than 300 organizations. The US Campaign also delivered a petition against the resolution signed by more than 5,000 people to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the sponsor of HR4681.

The letter and petition were also delivered by the Council for the National Interest (CNI) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). The petition was composed of letters signed by supporters of the US Campaign, CNI, and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

AUSTIN -- The Pentagon has once again investigated itself! And -- have a seat, get the smelling salts, hold all hats -- the Pentagon has once again concluded the Pentagon did absolutely nothing wrong and will continue to do so.

In this particularly fascinating case, the Pentagon investigated its own habit of paying people to make up lies about how well the war in Iraq is going, and then paying other people to put those lies in the Iraqi media, thus fooling the Iraqis into thinking everything in their country is tickety-boo. Well, if we can't fool them, whom can we fool?

The case revolves around a contract worth several million dollars given by the U.S. military command in Baghdad to the Lincoln Group, a public relations outfit started by two young entrepreneurs, one British, one American, in 2003 in Iraq. Articles were written by American military personnel from the American point of view about the war, to wit, it's going well. Lincoln Group in turn paid Iraqi journalists, some "on retainer," to print the articles without revealing the source.

Today's twenty-seventh anniversary of the disaster at Three Mile Island finds the nuclear industry pushing yet another lunatic attempt to revive atomic energy.

This periodic outbreak of industry-financed insanity usually precedes a major disaster, and always reflects a cynical denial of basic economic, public health and ecological reality. This year it also indicates a complete unwillingness to face the fact that renewable energy---especially wind power---has long ago left atomic energy in the radioactive dust.

At 4am on March 28, 1979, an "impossible" series of errors at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island Unit Two---which had opened exactly three months earlier---turned a $900 million investment into a $2 billion liability. The plant's owners lied repeatedly about the seriousness of the accident and its emissions. Escaping radiation poured into the surrounding countryside, quickly killing thousands of birds and insects. A plague of death, disease, malformation, stillbirth and spontaneous abortion followed among a host of nearby farm animals.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Unable to topple Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra after weeks of street protests, opponents are venting their fury by portraying him as Adolf Hitler, sparking a denouncement by Israel's embassy.

Thailand's recently emboldened English language newspapers, meanwhile, have plastered their pages with anti-Thaksin stories, rhetoric and vitriol.

"Fuck Thaksin," read graffiti displayed in a front-page photo in the respected Bangkok Post on Thursday (March 23).

That hand-written demand appeared on one of the big, mass-produced "Wanted Dead or Alive" posters waved by protesters to needle Thaksin -- a close ally of U.S. President George W. Bush and a former police officer who received a PhD in Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

The popular poster's "reward" offers 73 billion baht (1.8 billion U.S. dollars), the amount Thaksin's family pocketed, tax-free, by selling their Shin Corp. telecommunications empire on February 24 to the Singapore government's investment wing, Temasek Holdings.

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